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.
The town was founded around 1168, after a silver discovery led to the first Berggeschrey, and has been a centre of the mining industry in the Ore Mountains for centuries.
But “Godot” is not pronounced “G’doh!”, as if Homer Simpson were greeting an Australian. The correct pronunciation is “Goddo”, as if he were the sixth Marx Brother – Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, Gummo, Goddo.
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!”