Waiting for Godot Waiting for Godot Waiting for Godot ( ) is a play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), wait for the arrival of someone named Godot who never arrives, and while waiting they engage in a variety of discussions and encounter three other characters. "Waiting for Godot" is Beckett's translation of his own original French play, , and is subtitled (in English only) "a tragicomedy in two acts". The original French text was composed between 9 October 1948 and 29 January 1949. The premiere was on 5 January 1953 in the , Paris. The English
Postmodern literature For example, some mark the beginning of postmodernism with the first publication of John Hawkes' "The Cannibal" in 1949, the first performance of "En attendant Godot" in 1953 ("Waiting for Godot", 1955), the first publication of "Howl" in 1956 or of "Naked Lunch" in 1959. For others the beginning is marked by moments in critical theory: Jacques Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play" lecture in 1966 or as late as Ihab Hassan's usage in "The Dismemberment of Orpheus" in 1971. Brian McHale details his main thesis on this shift, although many postmodern works have developed out of modernism, modernism is characterised