Christianity, just like any other religion, is not just an ideology, it is a life

discipline, and in this sense, it should be regarded as more than a simple belief. Every time the
boy delivers the message saying that Godot is not going to show up the other day, Vladimir and
Estragon lose a little faith but only superficially because in reality there is no faith for them to
speak of. They are characters who have lost sight of the goal religion follows in our world: to
surround, enrich, assist and orient reason.

On the other hand, there are people for whom religion is the only belief they
have, and it prompts the reasons and goals of their actions, it is the general premise of everything
they think and say, and they cannot cling to anything else, they do not know anything else. It is
to such people that the play offers a good deal of opportunities to silence Christian presence, to
doubt it and to contradict Biblical motifs, plus, to a higher degree, the idea of divine presence. In
the secular play created by Beckett, however, Christian presence accepted without examining it
makes it appear as lame and this links it with the critique of ideology in Marxian writings. For
this reason, here, we undertake to discuss things from a scientific point of view, going beyond
the argument that Godot himself represents a caricature God or a savagely ironic image of
salvation In the process of achieving our goal, we are going to make use of several aspects of the
play already mentioned, connecting them to Feuerbach’s theory on Christianity where is
advocated the idea that man’s conception of religion, and consequently of God, is a form of
“self-consciousness”, that it represents a man-made projection of the need to believe in a deity
capable of both salvation and of being the judge, jury and executioner, but on a higher plane of
existence. What is denied is the essence of a divine act of superior wisdom which created and
shaped man necessarily in the image of a divine being that partook directly to that action Man’s
belief in a creation developed by a being that is like him but distinctively superior, which gives
substance to his belief that his existence is not random. Further, God is attributed material
properties alike to man’s, but, according to Feuerbach those properties spring from the human
consciousness which exists only on a physical level and is therefore a part of the imagination
only humans are capable of. Consequently, judging creation by what Feuerbach addresses as the
“human species-essence”, there is a collective belief created in the human vein that advocates the
idea that from our essence, as a sentient species capable of reason, we conceive the very object
of our worship .Feuerbach makes a description of this process as following:
 “Religion, at least the Christian religion, is the expression of how man relates
to himself, or more correctly, to his essential being; but he relates to his essential being as to another
being. The Divine Being is nothing other than the being of man himself, or rather, the being of man
abstracted from the limits of the individual man or the real, corporeal man, and objectified, i.e.,
contemplated and worshiped as another being, as a being distinguished from his own. All determinations
of the Divine Being are, therefore, determinations of the being of man.” (Feuerbach 14)

The argument brought forth by Feuerbach, correlates with the idea of,
dismantling a divine presence, omnipotent, omnipresent and manipulative. This is what happens
in Becket’s play, where the divine presence is being talked about constantly but is never heard
talking. None of the active gestures of believers, for example the practice of praying, are present,
which goes to prove that the deity does not interact with the creation to give it a direction in the
course of life. But human beings are not supposed to strictly follow this direction due to the
quality of free-will. The opposite is true, however, with Vladimir and Estragon since they resolve
to leave but fail to act upon their free-will due to their constraining link to Godot.

In addition to that, their giving so much importance to Godot’s promise to

come and enlighten them blocks them altogether. Confronting the audience with his characters’
empty link to Godot, Beckett’s radically silencing dramatization forces people who take for
granted Christian presence to explore its premises by casting doubt on whatever is automatically
taken for granted by men who wish to trust in a divine presence and give it all their faith and
power, entrusting themselves in its hands. Yet – what sort of providence is this, which chooses
not to be manifest and fulfil its role in the lives of such doomed characters?

Feuerbach’s theory may provide answers to such questions. He mentions the

“drive-to-happiness” or the will to seek salvation which makes people accept compromises in
order to retain their belief in God as a genuine almighty creator with power and reach over all
creation. People are prompted to believe in the good from an ethical and moral point of view and
to seek it, even when there appear limitations in their capacity to act justly. Everyone has to
negotiate between impressions, deep wishes and compromises in such a way as to achieve
salvation from whatever awaits them after corporeal death. The human mind needs to be
comforted and reassured that there is transcendence with divine presence in it and that there
exists something better after death; man needs to have the certainty that he will be saved from
damnation or nothingness. We are actually in search of happiness, because out of all our vast
array of positive feelings, happiness induces the optimism needed to survive and to cope with our
existence. Those feelings are what creates God both in our consciousness and deeper down, in
our unconscious, and they are the same trigger that give us the opportunity to make our own
choices and decide for ourselves what type of morality and set of ethical ideas we want to
conceive. In creating his radically destitute characters, who exist at the limit of bearable
existence, Beckett emphasizes the idea that human happiness is only a pretense constructed with
feeble gestures and mere words. The audience can see in action, during the two acts of Beckett’s
play that Vladimir and Estragon only pretend to be content with their various decisions.

Christianity, in the traditional and biblical sense, works as a dominant

mentality that has moderated large sets of views among both the sophisticated and the common
people, and it was praised and condemned in equal measure, so much that it led to crucifixions
and schisms and by now it should be an obvious argument as to why Beckett preferred silence
over ideology in his play. Salvation is assumed to be possible only for the ones that are pure of
heart, for those that follow in God’s commandments, but how can Vladimir and Estragon, as
representative of contemporary humanity, be worthy of it when they have already replaced a God
that is able to make that promise good , with the phantom-like Godot supposed to shelter and
feed them at a given moment? They might not be worthy at all, but they will continue to wait for
it and at the same time continue to hope for a place that is warmer at night than the eternal
country road.

The difference between Godot as God and Godot as man is that the
hypothetical character in the play is neither: he represents only a symbol for the main couple’s
erratic behavior and lack of certainty, just as Feuerbach showed: a figment of the human
imagination. In the same spirit, here is what Esslin asserts about Godot: “Any endeavour to
arrive at a clear and certain interpretation by establishing the identity of Godot through critical
analysis would be as foolish as trying to discover the clear outlines hidden behind the
chiaroscuro of a painting by Rembrandt by scraping away the paint.” (Esslin 37) One thing is
sure: that the supernatural mystery which envelops the deity when regarded from the natural
perspective is turned into emptiness by the fact that divine signs given from beyond the existence
of individuals are endlessly postponed. So, what is it that one can do with Beckett’s Rembrandt if
we are not to scrape it uselessly? Making the protagonists of the play into sad (or even savage)
clowns, the play underlines the stupidity of their waiting. But because the play is a tragicomedy,
the clowns toy with (the tragic idea) of suicide. “A reasonable percentage” of regaining power
over their lives would be through self-inflicted death. But because in the first act they lack a rope
and the tree they would hang themselves from will give in to their weight (especially
Vladimir’s), they give up the idea. When they return to it in the second act and they use the cord
which keeps Estragon’s trousers up, the cord snaps. Consequently, they end up as unaccountable
in themselves as they are to the audience and, both of them “remain in the dark”, both
symbolically and factually. There is one more series of intertwined motifs that help us conclude
this chapter’s endeavor to analyze the ways the ideological elements of Christianity are silenced
in Waiting for Godot. The idea of suicide in Beckett’s play is a subtle theme that is vehemently
forced on Vladimir and Estragon. Not because it seems out of place, but rather, because it is
conceived as something totally reasonable to do given their current circumstances. In the
Christian conception, suicide is a forbidden practice, believed to be an act of rebellion against
God’s generous gift of life, and it is often seen as an act of weakness. However, for Estragon,
especially, it represents an exciting idea and is continually advocated throughout the play,
whenever the suggestion to “bring a bit of rope” is mentioned. Esslin argues on this topic that:

“Suicide remains their favourite solution, unattainable owing to their own

incompetence and their lack of the practical tools to achieve it. It is precisely their
disappointment at their failure to succeed in their attempts at suicide that Vladimir and Estragon
rationalize by waiting, or pretending to wait, for Godot.” (Esslin 47)

So, contrary to the traditional religious belief, here suicide is embraced as a

likeable and reasonable means to a concrete end (to escape waiting), even though this remains a
fallible action only due to their lack of practical experience with it. Another allusion to this is the
arrival of Lucky in the first act with a rope around his neck. Of course, the moment he enters the
scene he is their main point of focus, and they begin analyzing him ostentatiously, being
certainly fascinated by him. In addition he is certainly the incarnation of their desire to suicide
come true, and although that is the case at first, they grow increasingly uninterested in him as
they begin to pity him for the state he is in and for his disdain of them, to the point where he
strikes Estragon to the ground. That would leave us with the impression that not the act of
hanging in itself is of interest to them, but rather pure suicide and it is their impracticality that
stops them from attaining it, as stated above. This fascination with death in itself is yet another
way of changing direction in respect to Christianity which advocates putting up with life as it is
rather than offend God by rebelling against the gift of life. On the other hand, suicide being a
rational solution to escape waiting, suicide is the essence of this play’s rationalization of
existence – which is precisely what makes it radical, meaning that it is convincing insofar as it
uses rational terms and expressions reflective of its inner essence.

But as far the rope is concerned, this prop that helps bring about the radical
effect of life on stage, we should take a look at what could be the most significant prop for the
play in this sense, the tree. It is a constant shadow of doubt for the characters, every time they
look at it, they forget something, or they come up with an absurd idea. It was mentioned in an
earlier argument that it might resemble a cross meant for crucifixion, but it is nonetheless a vivid
image of death as it is itself dead (even if by the second act there are leaves sprouting from it). If
we look carefully into it, there is a possible analogy to make with the Tree of Life in the Garden
of Eden (and as a key proto image of the axis mundi in myth criticism). It is not by mistake that
Estragon announces himself as Adam to Pozzo at one moment. And if we are to follow that
biblical image, in a larger context, this could act as its counterpart, a dead tree, two humans
constantly present in a barren garden, characters that are not cast away for sinning inside it but
rather are punished or condemned to reside in a simulacrum of it. In this consists one more
denunciation of the ideological element based on an already established or ready-made belief
ideologically communicated.

After fixing in the mind of the audience (or readers) their interest in death and
suicide, the two clowns prove to differ from each other in some respects. It could be argued that
Vladimir is the one who mostly advocates the necessity to wait for Godot in the first place so as
to alleviate their tragic and aberrant existence; after all he is the most religious voice of the two
and the one who vouches for Godot’s arrival, while Estragon is almost always skeptical about
this whole endeavor, even if he is in the end persuaded by Vladimir to keep on waiting. In a
scenario of this type it might be rational to believe that Estragon is the sane one and tries to save
himself from contagion with this apparent damnation by parting ways with his friend, but
rationality has no place here: he succumbs to it just as easily as Vladimir does.

To illustrate the points made above, it is important to study all the passages in
the play with biblical conversations. First, early in the play, comes the story of the two thieves
that were crucified along with Christ, showing how one of them was saved and the other
damned. Beckett’s clowns make this into a kind of statistical calculation that leaves the odds
open for or against the idea of Christian salvation. Later, towards the end of the first act,
Estragon identifies himself with Christ and the Calvary scene, saying quite admiringly that “they
crucified quick” (Beckett 44). As a prop, the tree resembles the cross though it is used as a
suicidal reference point for them. But as far as his comparison with Jesus Christ is concerned,
Gogo has an infatuation with biblical names as well. He presents himself as Adam, as mentioned
in a previous paragraph, and even calls to Pozzo by the name of Cain and Abel, the two sons of
the biblical version of Adam:

“ESTRAGON: To try him with other names, one after the other. It'd pass the
time. And we'd be bound to hit on the right one sooner or later. VLADIMIR: I tell you his name is
Pozzo. ESTRAGON: We'll soon see. (He reflects.) Abel! Abel! POZZO: Help! ESTRAGON: Got it in
one! VLADIMIR: I begin to weary of this motif. ESTRAGON: Perhaps the other is called Cain. Cain!
Cain! POZZO: Help! ESTRAGON: He's all humanity. (Silence.) Look at the little cloud.” (Beckett 76-
77)
By announcing that “He’s all humanity” Estragon makes reference to Pozzo’s
mortality and the fact that just as him, Cain and Abel were born mortals unlike Adam and Eve
who were cast out of their state of immortality. His eyesight is dead, but he can still stand and
travel aimlessly, reflecting Cain’s punishment for his brother’s murder, having to wander the
earth. Because such comparisons come from Estragon’s mouth, who is by now a known sceptic
in terms of religious belief, we are inclined to believe that they are used to only to render the
Christian presence even more shallow.

It is factors like these that combat the essence of this ideological presence in
the play and keep muddling the idea of a savior. Vladimir and Estragon serve as tragic
instruments for the suspension of religion and induce the idea that religion can do more harm
than good. Because the denial of religious hope takes a tragic form, the critique is radical. It is
also radical because it leaves no room for retrieving hope since the words that dismantle religion
fill all the available space, systematically, undeniably. In tone with the first half of Feuerbach’s
representation of the concept of God from the perspective of man, the next question that comes
to mind would be how do Vladimir and Estragon keep their hopes up about an eventual rescue?
There is one character that we have omitted from our argument so far and that represents in the
play an element capable of overriding and at the same time fooling the unaware couple of
tramps, namely the Boy. The bringer of both bad news and hope, he could be just as innocent as
he is eager to deliver Godot’s message to them. One could easily look at him and interpret him as
a doomsayer spelling not the end of the world but the mere and drab end of the day for them and
just an instrument for the unbroken cycle to begin anew. The Boy mentions in both acts that he
has a brother and that Godot beats his brother, but we never get to see this, and we never get to
see his brother much like in the case of Estragon’s continuous beatings received overnight from
the ten mysterious strangers. Christ healed, forgave, encouraged and in this way convinced
people while announcing that God was there to save mankind, whereas Vladimir and Estragon
are left waiting with nothing but empty promises by a messenger that can be interpreted as an
empty caricature of the Son sent by the Father to the people, who in turn abuse him for delaying
the message. While emptying the Boy’s role, the play creates a further reason to regard as an
ideologically empty belief in the mechanisms and agents of divine salvation and silences this
belief. The Boy’s disappointing coming paves the way for constructing the image of an emptied
Christ-figure whose imminent and continuous return is forever delayed.

Having put forward so far a number of arguments related to the content and
instruments that empty of meaning the Biblical proofs about God’s providential presence –
which is precisely what exposes the religious ideology as a means of controlling people’s
ordinary lives, we can now dwell on a new doctrinal dimension turned into an ideological
promise: Christ’s Second Coming, the ultimate promise of salvation depicted in the Book of
Revelation. But for this topic, we are not going to rely just on the play itself, for this concept was
depicted in another more poetical piece of work by W.B. Yeats titled accordingly: “The Second
Coming”. It is a poem envisioned by Yeats to present the end of the Christian era that started
“twenty centuries” earlier and is about to finally lead to a new revelation. Being written in the
long twentieth century interwar period, this poem develops Christ’s second coming differently
from what can be read in the Bible. In Yeats’ version Christ’s arrival, a second time is turned
into a tragical occurrence, the coming of a new age, one where man’s deepest and most intense
passions are released on earth. The Bible anticipates and presents Christ’s Second Coming to
earth, in a glorious manner, where the forces of the Beast and his armies are defeated and:

“Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who worked
signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who
worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone.”
(Revelation 19:20)
But in Yeats’s poem the beast replaces Christ returning to earth. The poem is
a vision about “A shape with lion body and the head of a man”, a shape that is commonly
reminiscent of a being known as a sphinx, hence its presence in a desert. What does the vision in
the desert have to do with the second coming of Christ? The answer is to be found in the
beginning of the poem, in the words “[t]he ceremony of innocence is drowned” and “[t]he best
lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity”. This is a presentation of
the corrupt life that modern man leads because he has ignored Christ’s message “for twenty
centuries of stony sleep”. The poem by Yeats presents the panorama of interwar humanity.
Merging Feuerbach’s notion about the man-made origin of religious ideas (which involves a
denial of transcendence), it can be stated that the vision of “The Second Coming” starts from the
same premise. Because Yeats’s modern humanity shows its beastly face, it can only await the
second coming of a beast, like the Beast of Revelation. While the poem contains the
condemnation of civilized man’s ways after the First World War in its translation (modulation
and adaptation) of myth, the play by Beckett transfers into the context of material everyday
experience after the Second World War mere chunks (traces) of myth. There is myth twisted in
Yeats’s case and myth defeated, disfigured, silenced in Beckett’s case. There is more progress on
the path of silencing myth in the later literary work than in the earlier, because of the increased
amount of human self-destruction registered in the history of the modern world no more than
forty years after the First World War. There is a common root in the fear of a supernaturally
actuated beast in “The Second Coming” and the frightening stasis of life suspended in mid-way
deployed in “Waiting for Godot”. Godot is effaced, reduced to a non-entity, silenced and done
away with in the play, the subject of an indeterminate fear which is more tormenting than the
fear of anything definite. Godot becomes a mere pretext for the torment of waiting all lifetime
and a fit image for the futility of existence. By contrast, in the 1919 poem, the beast represents
the essence of sinfulness: humanity’s “twenty centuries of stony sleep” and the failure to
respond to Christ’s self-sacrificing message of love springing from a tenderest heart capable to
forgive.

The comparison of the tragic poem by Yeats which rewrites Christian myth in
Beckett’s tragicomedy shows how the comedic element creates situations for predicating absence
of meaning. There is no second coming to speak of since the figure of divinity is absent and it
just pretends to exist. Everyday life’s situations can only get worse and more absurd for
characters irreversively caught in the acts of waiting, unable to move forward and deprived of
freedom by waiting for the culmination of their absurd actions. Silencing Christianity as an
ideology for controlling people’s everyday actions fills the stage with drab, always identical
dramatized acting. If one were to find an underlying myth in “Waiting for Godot”, this would be
the myth of the eternal recurrence of the same, which Friedrich Nietzsche introduced in his essay
The Gay Science. The argument of this myth is treated as following in Nietzschean thinking

“what would you think if a demon told you that everything in life would recur
over and over again eternally? How would you answer the question 'Do you want this again and
innumerable times again?'? This question, Nietzsche says, 'would lie on your actions as the heaviest
weight'. It tests your ability not to be overcome by the world's horror and meaninglessness.” (Nietzsche
xv)
Referring to the idea that our world as well as the one presented in Waiting for
Godot, is in a continuous loop, everything that happened, is happening and will happen is going
to continue to repeat over and over as it does not have a definite beginning or end.

It is worth looking into the possible identity of the other pair of human beings
that come on stage after Didi and Gogo, Pozzo and Lucky. The comparison indicates that the
second pair of travelers caught in the act of waiting (or moving aimlessly) has a richer set of
social and cultural determinations than the former couple. In addition to Pozzo and Lucky being
cast in the master-slave position, when Lucky is charged to think by the others, he begins to utter
a long and seemingly frivolous speech that begins with an intriguing statement about “a personal
God” that goes as following:

“Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and
Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time
without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves
us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown” (Beckett 34)
 The speech begins with a mere “salad” of words. Immediately after
mentioning two writer-like authorities (which indicates Lucky’s intellectual habits emptied of
meaningfulness), and then referring to “a personal god”, Lucky goes on imitating animal sounds,
reminiscent of the ones geese make, which ironically reduces the god in question to nothing
more than an imposter. He gives the attribute of divinity to a trio of words; “apathia” which is a
different form for “apathy” meaning a lack of interest, “athambia” which expresses
imperturbability and “aphasia” that refers to a lack of speech or communication (with man, in
this instance). They culminate in the idea contrary to the Christian belief that God has abandoned
his creation, is indifferent towards man’s fate and does not want to be concerned with it. But
despite that loss of interest Lucky continues to state that he still “loves us dearly with some
exceptions for reasons unknown”, this is an affirmation that wants to explain God is still fair and
just, applies justice where justice is due and does not discriminate, but as far as the unknown
reasons are concerned they reflect us in our everlasting ignorance for how the divinity works.
Here can be observed at work the absurdist intentions of silencing meanings by creating dramatic
situations that (ironically) contradict the words uttered by characters automatically. The goal of
the play is to expose the failure of using the world meaningfully by modern human beings who
have ceased to understand or actively live through the meanings bequeathed by the tradition.
This is what makes Beckett’s characters tragic clowns and the world a tragicomic scene. On this
scene, inherited meanings are silenced or emptied by a mechanism which renders pointless and
automatic whatever characters say or do.

If we were to weigh the absurdity behind the different motifs and characters
that we address in order to showcase our methods to silence Christian presence, Lucky would be
the most suitable candidate to bring forth the essence of this notion, because he is the only one in
the play who does not question his presence and purpose. In the play we find this idea in the
form of Lucky’s devotion to keep carrying “his burdens” meaning Pozzo’s belongings. At one
point in the play he starts crying over Pozzo discrediting his loyalty:

“ESTRAGON: He’s crying! POZZO: Old dogs have more dignity. (He proffers his
handkerchief to Estragon.) Comfort him, since you pity him. (Estragon hesitates.) Come on. (Estragon
takes the handkerchief.) Wipe away his tears, he'll feel less forsaken. Estragon hesitates. VLADIMIR:
Here, give it to me, I'll do it. Estragon refuses to give the handkerchief. Childish gestures. POZZO:
Make haste, before he stops. (Estragon approaches Lucky and makes to wipe his eyes. Lucky kicks him
violently in the shins. Estragon drops the handkerchief, recoils, staggers about the stage howling with
pain.) Hanky! Lucky puts down bag and basket, picks up handkerchief and gives it to Pozzo, goes back to
his place, picks up bag and basket.” (Beckett 25)

It is important to sense the New Testament echoes in the above quotation, for
example in the cue about the wiping away of tears and in the use of the word forsaken (which is
used in connection to God forsaking Christ on Calvary, when Christ laments His being forsaken
by His Father, “Eli, Eli, lama sabactani?”, “My God Elohim, why have you forsaken me?”

Although Lucky feels discarded, he does not give up on his role, violently
refusing the smallest comfort he can get from anyone in favor of doing what he is used to do,
putting down the bags and picking them back up. He is absurdity incarnate and for as much as he
is and as much as he does, he does not question anything related to himself. This points to the
drama of modern faithless man who cannot refuse his everyday role and actions but must
continue though aimlessly to live.

Lucky’s statement about “a personal God” reminds us of the principle that

was presented in Feuerbach’s theory, because as we have already concluded, this version of God
is one that is created individually and not collectively, it is statistically important that to each of
those present in the play he represents the same empty projection. Although Lucky’s speech
descends more and more into a nonsensical collection of words, it could be argued that he
himself could act as a mediator between communication from the divine to the humans. There
are several familiar traits of divinity that he shares with Christ. First of all, he explicitly describes
the personal God “with white beard”; we should also remind ourselves that Lucky has long white
hair, therefore he could be interpreted as reminiscent of Christ. On the other hand, just as Christ
came to mankind in hopes of delivering wisdom, He was rejected and cast away, Lucky’s
thinking tries to do the same. But, of course, Lucky is not as successful and stumbles in the way
he is doing it and, being reduced to a merely empty reminder. When, in the second act, Pozzo is
deprived of his possessions and of his sight and, holding only sand in the bag that Lucky is
carrying, he is brought down on the ground begging for mercy and help. He even resolves to sell
Lucky, maybe a symbolic reminiscence of the way Judas had sold Christ but does not manage to
go through with it before he himself is robbed of sight.
 There is, consequently, a multitude of means for silencing the ideological
power of the religious metanarrative and dogmas in Beckett’s play. Among them, attaching
fragments of the biblical/Christian echoes to surprising situations and characters ranks first. We
meet with this misappliance of Christian echoes from the first to the last scenes of the play. From
this point of view, all the characters in Waiting for Godot are replicas of each other.

Here lies the difference between the existentialist philosophy that makes
non-entities of individuals and the message of Beckett’s play as analyzed in the present BA
project. Talking of silencing ideologies means regarding classes of humanity, rather than
individuals, just as represented by the pairs of characters in “Waiting for Godot”.

As seen above, Beckett’s script provides sufficiently strong rational arguments

for silencing religion used as a modern ideology. The rational examination of irrational Christian
belief, and its radical critique take the form available to an exhausted modern humanity. In the
upcoming chapter we are going to deal with a much different perspective in which spiritualistic
religion is no longer involved, but rather a materialistic one that emphasizes the roles and
interactions of people when they are confronted with the everyday fact that in essence, they are
very much absent to each other on a daily basis.