Waiting for Godot his surveillant presence. He is by turns dismissed, satirised, or ignored, but he, and his tortured son, are never definitively discarded." "Waiting for Godot" has been described as a "metaphor for the long walk into Roussillon, when Beckett and Suzanne slept in haystacks [...] during the day and walked by night [... or] of the relationship of Beckett to Joyce." Becket told Ruby Cohn that Caspar David Friedrich's painting "Two Men Contemplating the Moon", which he saw on his journey to Germany in 1936, was a source for the play. Though the sexuality of Vladimir and Estragon is not always
Waiting for Godot earned PhDs. 'How do you know they hadn't?' was his reply." They clearly have known better times, a visit to the Eiffel Tower and grape-harvesting by the Rhône; it is about all either has to say about their pasts, save for Estragon's claim to have been a poet, an explanation Estragon provides to Vladimir for his destitution. In the first stage production, which Beckett oversaw, both are "more shabby-genteel than ragged...Vladimir at least is capable of being scandalised...on a matter of etiquette when Estragon begs for chicken bones or money." Although Beckett refused to be drawn on the backgrounds of