GODOT AND THE GREAT PUMPKIN (originally presented at the University of Louisville 20th Century Literature Conference, Feb. 2002)
Near the end of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," Sally's patience ends with, "I spent the whole night waiting for the Great Pumpkin, and all that came was a stupid beagle." My initial reaction to Waiting for Godot was much the same as Sally's unsatisfactory Halloween, but when dealing with trick or treat, you sometimes get the trick. As a result, I spent several years feeling grumpy at the mention of Samuel Beckett, but I was never quite convinced that the darkness was quite so absolute or necessary. The more someone quotes "there's nothing to be done," though more I look for something to be done. When I realized that the Great Pumpkin equals Godot in absurdity, but we respond to the two stories differently, I knew that I'd found some wiggle room to alter the perspective, interpretation, and application.
I've come to suspect that we're
at least as fond of absurdity as we are of order, and of course,
the two are not mutually exclusive. Nor is it fair to assume that
absurdity is intrinsically bad or that order is intrinsically
good. We want order, and meaning to offer direction, but we also
want freedom and creativity to offer possibilities. We may not
expect the Great Pumpkin, but neither despair nor stoicism off
a satisfactory substitute for some form of hope. Somehow we have
to balance those desires, and so we get two stories about absurdity,
but our differing reactions to the stories suggest variables in
our relationship with absurdity. We have some choice. Life may
or may not have meaning, but it most assuredly has absurdity.
In that we have no choice, but we can choose or manipulate our
attitude.
That idea itself isn't overwhelmingly
new. There are two choices running through reactions to Beckett's
work, two extremes. The primary camp goes with a "nasty,
brutish," and not short enough pose best summarized with
the now politically incorrect, "Life's a bitch, and then
you die." Oh, yes, and "There's nothing to be done."
In juxtaposition is the human spirit camp. By not giving in to
the utter meaninglessness, waiting each day in spite of the pointlessness
of it, our down-trodden non-heroes somehow glorify the human spirit.
This would be, "You're born, you live, you die" attitude,
and "there's nothing to be done." I'm not after a cotton
candy, Pollyanna world, either/or absolutes tend to conceal "Choice
C."
Since it was watching Charlie Brown
that helped me see another option, I'll start there. The first
question is simply what is it that's absurd in The Great Pumpkin.
There's the Great Pumpkin himself/itself, and his Santa Claus
competitor. There's Charlie Brown trying to kick the football
no matter how well he knows Lucy, and there's Charlie Brown always
getting a rock in place of a treat. Of course there's Snoopy,
the WWI flying ace. But what of that would we ever want to change?
Of course, we play the game differently with an animated children's
story. We don't read this story with quite the high seriousness
of a critic. It's okay to enjoy the story, and so waiting for
the Great Pumpkin becomes cute, not tragic. After all, children
grow up and put such silliness behind them all in due time, but
we don't want them to trade innocence and wonder for stoicism
in the face of the void. Even if we believe in darkness, we somehow
want children to hold onto something for us, some hope that we
might become like children. We want Charlie Brown to keep trying
to kick the football because maybe once he'll put one over on
Lucy, and we'll have a reason to get up in the morning with a
possibility, not merely a full bladder.
The real absurdity in the Great
Pumpkin is the absolute quality in Linus's philosophy. First,
he has to find the "most sincere" pumpkin patch. Very
sincere isn't sincere enough, and when he lets a single "if"
slip out, he's "doomed." In that black and white perspective,
there's no room for human error, no room for the oops that's always
coming sooner or later. Nothing is quite so absurd as perfection,
whether that's perfect goodness or perfect darkness. Absolutes
become utterly static, and it is at such extremes that there is
"nothing to be done."
Turning back to Godot, what then
is absurd in that story? Two men wait for a man who may or may
not come, and they don't know what he'll do if he does come. This
cycle goes on indefinitely, and it appears to be the central absurdity,
especially since it's the action (or non-action) named in the
title. However, this may be the most reasonable action in the
play because it creates possibility. It's not much of a possibility,
but it's a sliver anyway, and it's certainly more than anything
else we're shown. Other than that, we have quite a bit of violence.
Estragon and Vladimir are beaten and do their share of beating.
Naturally, they talk quite a bit,
but there is little conversation. Rather than talking to one another,
they talk at one another. Two, perhaps even three lines will connect
to one another, then it's non-sequitur time again. Characters
act upon each other, not with each other, increasing the sense
of isolation and chaos. While conversation may often seem disjointed,
it has a tendency toward pattern, a building of ideas. Break the
conversation, and you emphasize the Cartesian world in which everything
is separate and incapable of interaction. After all, Descartes
was never able to come up with a satisfactory explanation for
how we see any object when there is a separation to cross. He
came up with some fascinating attempts, but nothing to satisfactorily
overcome the mechanistic view. For the west, that had to wait
for Heisenberg and the quantum approach to a fully interconnected
system, for Chaos Theory that says apparent chaos is really just
a pattern too complex to see.
So life is absurd, but Waiting for
Godot doesn't show that life is absurd nearly as much as it shows
that we live absurdly. Whether live has meaning or not, is it
better to act in ways that increase our sense of isolation or
take pleasure in the delight of creating conversation? Now there
is a special absurdity or paradox. Even if there is no meaning,
we can create patterns, and patterns are at least the ingredients
of meaning. A Deconstructionist may point out, quite correctly,
that words have no intrinsic meaning, but we cannot talk about
the meaninglessness shown by Waiting for Godot unless Beckett
creates a shape we can interpret as meaning meaninglessness.
Beckett said, "I take no sides.
I am interested in the shape of ideas." Unless we want to
argue with Beckett, there must then be sides to be taken, and
there must be ideas and forms. Be there meaning, be there no meaning,
we are still seekers of meaning, creators of meaning, interpreters
of forms, so the shapes Beckett creates become Rorschach tests.
If we're feeling more playful, they become cloud-watching games.
In that case, the question becomes why we interpret the shapes
the way we do. I don't really want to use "should" or
"right" along with interpretation, but are there better
or worse ways to approach interpretation?
Critical approaches are more numerous
than fleas of late, and there even remain strong traces of the
New Critical approach looking for a correct interpretation with
authorial intent and all the problems that entails. My first critical
approach to reading is to switch the critic off as completely
as possible because I'm a firm believer in reading for simple
pleasure first and for the intellectual gymnastics afterward.
That second stage revolves around a single question: how can I
use these ideas to alter or refine my perception of and relationship
to myself and the world? That creates a trinity that isn't all
that new, consisting of myself, the very real text (including
authorial intent and accident), and the social or even broader
context we share. Who am I, and how do I relate to the universe?
Nothing big.
If I wanted to name my approach,
I guess I'd call it Utilitarian Creative Interpretation, and it's
roots go back to my high school days, that time when many students
start thinking that the word symbolism is pretty harsh profanity.
For me, it peaked when we read To Kill a Mockingbird and got to
the scene when the sheriff suggested Atticus, the father and lawyer,
should be the one to shoot the mad dog. Not surprisingly, Atticus's
young children were quite surprised to find out that their father
had been champion shot of the county in his youth. My well-intentioned
teacher explained to us that this was the symbol of justice shooting
down the mad dog of prejudice. In those younger days, I didn't
use profanity, and I simply sat there thinking how silly that
was, though I had no other interpretation to offer at the time.
Only after years of teaching and
individual conferences did I realize how common this scene really
was. We all have to go through various stages of realizing that
these giants we call Mom and Dad are really just people. They
were just as small as us and even have pasts that go beyond us.
It's when we begin to realize a simple truth that we can believe
in our own future and accept our parents mistakes. People are
allowed to make mistakes, but gods are not.
When we read as critics, we have
a tendency to go for something big. Whether we're trying
to impress ourselves, our colleagues or the tenure committee,
we tend to jump from ground zero to Platonic ideals all in one
superhuman bound, but bypassing everything in between is another
way we strengthen the appearance of separation, disconnectedness.
My teacher took people and turned them into non-human symbols
grounded only in ethereal concepts. That's the kind of jump that
makes authors either groan or laugh (and sometimes look for other
ways to make critics jump). It certainly isn't fair to readers
trying to understand (even if not consciously) their own experience.
It takes meaning and turns it into meaninglessness. I'd go so
far as to call it absurd. Rather than turning a human into a symbol,
the most effective and powerful symbols will most often humanize
an idea, not "idealize" a human.
Idealists are accused of having
their heads in the clouds, but that's just so they can watch the
critics who are floating in the stratosphere, too. Of course,
both earth and clouds are important to continuing life, whether
it's absurd or not, but our ability to understand experience or
philosophy in useful ways comes when the two are grounded. When
the symbol is grounded in experience, lightning strikes. In literary
terms, that's a good thing even if we get quite a shock.
So far, I've given my reading style
a name and made fun of literary critics, but where is the so what
behind it all? For me, that comes as a teacher. If I want to re-interpret
myself through a Dick Francis mystery in my own living room, that's
my business, but if I have the nerve to stand in front of other
people and try to influence their lives, I'd better consider what
influence I'm going to have. At least as far back as high school,
my teachers were trying to get me to read as a critic. Certainly
every graduate school I've had contact with has created the same
atmosphere. The more I talk to my colleagues, the more I wonder
when some of them last read as readers, read for the simple pleasure
of words, ideas, and action, without wondering if they could get
an article out of this to improve job security.
I know it's not just me. Too many
of my students come in with a hatred of symbolism. Far too many
have told me that they are avoiding majoring in art, music, or
English because that's the field they love, and they're afraid
that studying it will destroy the love. The fear isn't unjustified,
especially if they have teachers who have divorced literature
and married criticism.
I really don't want to tell my students
that "there's nothing to be done." I don't want to tell
them that the glory is in not committing suicide when the situation
seems to call for it, that the only reason not to commit suicide
is because suicide and living are equally pointless. There's no
point to life, but read this assignment anyway. It seems that
some critics and philosophers want to tell us that it isn't cool
to hope; it isn't "in" to laugh, except with cynicism.
These stories are our contemporary mythology, part of how we form
opinions about the working of the universe, how to live and how
to die. As we read and interpret them, we read and create ourselves.
So how can I read Waiting for Godot
to alter or refine my perception of and relationship to myself
and the world? Grounding the ideas in experience, is life absurd
in terms of paradox and unpredictability? Whether love is chemical,
psychological or spiritual, it surely proves absurdity. Do the
characters in the play behave absurdly? Certainly. Do people frequently
act in such absurd ways? Any daily newspaper provides ample evidence.
Do I want to live in imitation of these characters if I have a
choice? Not hardly. If life is absurd, and the characters and
real people live absurdly, does the play tell me that I must live
in such an absurd manner? Ah, the crux. There is the possibility
of a negative example. Even a mirror held to nature would reverse
the image. So there is the possibility, but is there anything
in the play itself that can justify a reversal of attitude? After
all, even if we're cloud-watching, we don't want to claim that
a round cloud looks like a square.
Vladimir raises a question for us,
and questions introduce possibilities because we don't have to
give the pat answer. In one gospel, one thief is saved, and it's
that story that's remembered. "Why believe him rather than
the others?" According to Estragon, it's because "People
are bloody ignorant apes" and we're all too ready to settle
for that answer because it has just enough truth to satisfy our
grumpier nature. Still, the question sits there for the reader.
Why believe that story rather than another or none?
If all are saved, what's the point?
Whatever we do, the end is the same. If none are saved, what's
the point? At either extreme, there are no choices, no possibilities.
It's not only a religious question but also a matter of meaning
or meaningless, a matter of the difference between absurdity and
real chaos. If one was saved, then we can affect our lives and
move out of the realm of mere chance. Why believe that story?
Because it's neither all cotton candy nor cyanide. It offers no
promises but possibilities, yes.
It's also Vladimir who says, "There's
man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet."
Perhaps when we find only darkness in absurdity, it isn't Beckett
or reality but ourselves who are responsible. Of course, that's
the temptation to believe that all were saved or none were saved.
If there's nothing to be done, then we can deny responsibility
entirely.
Beckett shows us the absurdity around
us, and he shows us people living absurdly, but the simple fact
that life is absurd doesn't mean that we have to live absurdly
in all its worst incarnations. Just because life can be that way,
doesn't mean the play insists life MUST be that way, or that we
have to accept such lives. After all, if words had inherent meaning,
we couldn't treat them like the glorious Silly Putty they are.
If life weren't absurd, we wouldn't have puns. Perhaps we need
to watch and read more like we do when we watch The Great Pumpkin.
Numerous philosophers have told us to become more like children,
but that doesn't mean we become lemmings blindly following one
idea or one authority. It means that somehow we have to blend
wisdom painfully gained with simplicity; match the cynicism that
gives us caution with the innocence that gives us abandon; pair
our doubt with wonder; balance our pre-revelation Scrooge with
our Tiny Tim.
I've been accused of being an idealist and unrealistic. Fine. I confess. And I don't want to stop you from reading as you wish, but we also need to maintain some humor and humanity. Mostly, we need to remember that realistic and pessimistic aren't really synonymous. The third approach in place of life's a bitch or stoicism is one I encountered long before I heard of Samuel Beckett, the Theater of the Absurd, or existentialism, and I've long forgotten where I first saw, "Why take life so seriously? You'll never get out of it alive anyway get out of it alive anyway?"