VLADIMIR: That passed the time.
ESTRAGON: It would have passed in any case.
This whole book strikes me as a practical joke. The drama is obsessed with death, transience, helplessness and futility; the protagonists are not searching but waiting for something (or rather, someone) to give their lives purpose, and to rescue them from their wretched material conditions. In their insistence on waiting they miss the chance to take these matters in to their own hands. In all these respects their inactivity and demise seems like the perfect metaphor for waiting for God. Messengers come and prophesy the imminent arrival of Godot; the protagonists cannot tell whether the messengers are reliable, nor even whether the second messenger is the first messenger returning. The first messenger is a shepherd; he minds the flock. Elsewhere dialogue gives us references to Cain and Abel, to the crucifiction, to a discrepancy in the gospels. The text screams Christian connotation at the reader.
And yet, on the back cover Beckett is quoted as saying:
"I told him [Sir Ralph Richardson] that if by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot. This seemed to disappoint him greatly."
Waiting for Godot is generally touted as one of the earliest examples, if not the earliest example, of postmodern literature, a movement ostentatiously devoid of "meaning" and morality. Could it not be that Beckett wanted us to read religion into this tale, in order that he could tell us we're wrong? Could it be that he wanted to make a point about our tendency to see patterns where none exist, our tendency to wish-think, our tendency to project? I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
VLADIMIR: Poor Pozzo!
ESTRAGON: I knew it was him!
VLADIMIR: Who?
ESTRAGON: Godot.
VLADIMIR: But it's not Godot.
ESTRAGON: It's not Godot?
VLADIMIR: It's not Godot.
ESTRAGON: Then who is it?
VLADIMIR: It's Pozzo.