Who is Godot? What does he Mean? Is he supposed to be God? The magic words: Who Cares? Godot is what Alfred Hitchcock called the MacGuffin – a plot device about which the characters care desperately, but the audience isn’t meant to give a damn.
For instance, directors often puzzle about the “Where are all these corpses from?” section in Act Two: What the hell are these guys talking about? What does it mean? Beckett’s notebook specifies that they have suddenly seen the audience and are horrified. It’s a gag. It’s a dig at the audience. What it’s not is an Intellectual Mountain. Much of the fog in the more mystical sections clears away when you can say, “Hello! It’s a joke!”