Waiting for Godot is Gay

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot has been mired in controversy since its opening night. As the story goes, the play’s first performance in 1953 was met with jeering and anger from the audience. “This is not theatre as we know it,” remarked one critic. Another dismissively characterized Waiting for Godot as a play in which “nothing happens, twice.” Nowadays, the piece is widely regarded as a masterpiece of absurdist theatre; however, critics remain staunchly divided in what, exactly, they think the play is trying to say. Here, I want to advance a somewhat controversial perspective: I think Waiting for Godot is a kinky gay love story.

An Absence of Plot

Before attempting to hazard an interpretation of Waiting for Godot it will, of course, be necessary to summarize the play’s narrative. The task will prove challenging because, as I have already alluded to, this is quite famously a story in which almost nothing happens. The action—such as it is—revolves around a pair of tramps called Vladimir and Estragon. Over the course of two distinct acts, these hapless fellows stand next to tree by the side of a country road, waiting for a mysterious figure called Godot. Godot, for his part, never arrives. Our protagonists wait all the same and, as they wait, they exchange small talk, debate matters of theology, and encounter a few other denizens of this barren surrealist landscape.

Some readers have fixated on Godot himself. What might this mysterious figure represent? Many have suggested that Godot is God; however, it should be noted that Beckett himself rejected this interpretation. For my part, I think it’s a mistake to focus our attention too narrowly on Godot. In my reading, Godot is relevant to Beckett’s play only insofar as he gives our protagonists something to be waiting for. Godot never shows up precisely because he isn’t import. All that matters is the waiting. And, of course, how each character uses the time he has been granted by the conceit of waiting for Godot.

Early on in their wait, Vladimir tells the story of the two thieves crucified with Jesus, one of whom was ostensibly saved; the other, damned. He takes note of the inconsistency between the four gospels, suggesting that salvation through religious devotion is far from guaranteed. And it’s made clear in the dialogue that the kind of salvation these two men desire—the only salvation that could ever matter—is salvation from death.

Vladimir and Estragon encounter another couple while they wait: Pozzo and Lucky. Pozzo is rich and powerful (at least by the standards of the grim world these figures inhabit). But the play takes pains to show up that Pozzo’s prestige does nothing to save him from the ravages of aging; the second time we encounter this man he is blind and suffering.

We’re told that Pozzo’s companion, Lucky, was once possessed a great capacity for thinking. However, when the man finally speaks, we see that his great dramatic monologue is little more than incomprehensible gibberish. It seems clear that Pozzo’s “wisdom,” such as it is, is insufficient to secure him any meaningful salvation. Indeed, the second time we meet this poor figure his lot in life is no better than before. Lucky is still the servant of his cruel master, Pozzo. Only now, the ravages of aging have claimed the indentured man’s hearing.

At several points in Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon contemplate suicide. But they never follow through. Instead, each time the subject is broached, they renew their commitment to the waiting and, by extension, to the nebulous reason for their wait—Godot. They go on with the business of living, in other words. Toward the end of the play, when a young boy informs the pair that Godot will once again not be arriving, the audience has the sense that Vladimir is starting to understand the absurdity of the situation. This, for me, is the single most important moment of the play: Vladimir knows that Godot will never arrive. But, for some reason, he carries on waiting all the same. Understanding why he does so is, in my view, very much the point of the story.

A Biblical Connection

The book of Ecclesiastes looms large over Beckett’s oeuvre (as it does with my own work). This is particularly true in the case of Waiting for Godot. Hence, a diversion into biblical study will be necessary before we can proceed.

Ecclesiastes documents the thoughts of learned, wealthy, and elderly man identified only as The Philosopher. The Philosopher has lived a very full life. He has experience everything the world has to offer, and he has found it all to be meaningless. The Philosopher pursued knowledge and sought to be wiser than any previous king of Jerusalem; however, he soon understood this to be futile. We all die in the end and our ideas—whether brilliant or silly—are soon forgotten.

Next, The Philosopher tells us that he pursued pleasure, indulging himself in food and drink, listening to music, and having many sexual partners. Yet again, he concludes that his hedonistic existence was meaningless: pleasure is fleeting and, in the end, it solves nothing.

Finally, The Philosopher tells us that he accumulated an incredible amount of wealth: he built houses, owned slaves and livestock, stockpiled silver and gold. Again, he came to realize that this pursuit was futile. Money and power did not bring him peace; in the end, he knew that death is a certainty. His fortune might be impressive, but he understood that he could not carry it with him into whatever might lie beyond death.

Because we are discussing a book of the Bible, one might mistakenly imagine that The Philosopher believes in a promise of salvation in some kind of afterlife. Not so. “Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals,” he wrote. “The same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust and to dust all return.” Nor did The Philosopher believe there was any sort of moral order or justice to be found here on earth. “The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favour to the learned,” he wrote. “But time and chance happen to them all.”

The Philosopher’s teachings are very clearly echoed in the events of Waiting for Godot. Pozzo, for example, seems to embody the futility of wealth. After all, he is miserable and his life, on the whole, seems scarcely better than that of his impoverished servant. Similarly, I would argue that Lucky embodies the futility of learning. We are told that he has a great capacity for reason and wisdom; however, his great monologue is pure nonsense. Finally, it seems clear that the entire absurd universe of Waiting for Godot has been constructed to make embody the core of The Philosopher’s teaching: life is meaningless; nothing we do has any purpose; there is no justice to be found; the world is a place of suffering and aging and inevitable death.

A Philosophical Connection

Another text will prove important if we wish to make sense of Waiting for Godot: Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. For Camus, the absurd condition of our existence stems from conflict between our intrinsic desire meaning and the “unreasonable silence of the world,” as he put it. In Camus’ view, we are all like Sisyphus, who was cursed by the Gods to spend eternity pushing a boulder up a mountain. Each time the task is accomplished, the boulder rolls back to where it started and our weary hero must begin his struggle anew. Nothing of any lasting value comes from Sisyphus’ toil. Nor, we are meant to understand, from our own. Camus’ vision of a repetitive and meaningless existence is, of course, mirrored by the “plot” of Waiting for Godot.

I have already mentioned Vladimir’s commitment to waiting, even after he seems to understand that Godot is not coming. This peculiar resolution is very much in line with Camus’ philosophy; Camus believed that the only solution to our absurd predicament is to live in a state of perpetual revolt, acknowledging the absurdity of existence moment-by-moment and living in the tension. (It’s noteworthy that the aforementioned young boy actually refers to Vladimir as “Mister Albert” near the end of the second act, suggesting that Beckett wanted to nod toward Albert Camus’ influence on his work.)

A Controversial Take

So far in this essay, I have been fairly conservative in my interpretation of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Now, at last, I will risk a controversial claim: the characters Vladimir and Estragon are gay lovers.

This take is apparently contentious amongst scholars, so let me defend myself. Firstly, these two men are clearly codependent and deeply entangled with one another. They have been together for a very, very long time. And there is good reason to think their relationship has never been strictly platonic. Early in the play, for example, Vladimir mentions that he has a tendency to “go all queer.” Beckett also places an obvious emphasis on one or the other’s desire to embrace. Estragon clearly cares a good deal about how Vladimir’s breath smells, and he says as much several times. Vladimir and Estragon also use cutesy pet names to refer to one another. The pair fantasize about running away together. And, perhaps most tellingly, both men are excited by possibility that hanging themselves by the neck might result in mutual erections. Finally, in the play’s second act, Vladimir and Estragon amuse themselves by role-playing a master/slave dynamic which could easily be interpreted as a BDSM scene. From my perspective, the idea that Vladimir and Estragon aren’t queer is the interpretation which requires defending, not the other way around…

If I have established that Waiting for Godot’s protagonists are probably queer, the next question worth asking is this: Why should it matter? For me, having a correct understanding of Vladimir and Estragon’s relationship is integral to understanding the play’s message. Because I think Beckett is actually doing much more than simply enacting the philosophy of Ecclesiastes or Camus, as some critics have argued. In fact, I think that Beckett is pointing out something very profound about human relationships.

The fact that there are actually two couples in the play invites us to compare and contrast their relationships. Pozzo and Lucky should clearly be understood as an example of a dysfunctional relationship—one man subjugating another for his own benefit. Vladimir and Estragon, on the other hand, are very clearly in love. Sure, they often bicker like an old married couple. But there is an obvious affection between the two men. To me, this is significant. Beckett is telling us that, yes, Godot might never arrive. But at least there is the time we get to spend with the people we love. It is love which makes the waiting bearable.

There is one last point worth emphasizing in connection with this queer interpretation of Waiting for Godot. Vladimir frequently refers to Estragon by the pet name “Gogo,” which sounds conspicuously similar to “Godot.” I take this to confirm my claim that, while the true purpose of Vladimir’s wait will never arrive, the closest thing he can cleave onto is the romantic love he finds in his partner.

There is so much more one could say about the erasure of queer figures from history, literature, and art. For now, it will suffice to note that many scholars’ stubborn refusal to see the queerness directly in front of their eyes likely means that they have completely missed the most important part of the most important play of the Theatre of the Absurd.