The play is in two acts.The plot concerns Vladimir (also called Didi) and Estragon (also called Gogo), who arrive at a pre-specified roadside location in order to await the arrival of Godot. Vladimir and Estragon appear to be tramps: their clothes are ragged and do not fit. They pass the time in conversation, and sometimes in conflict. Estragon complains of his ill-fitting boots, and Vladimir struts about stiff-legged due to a painful bladder condition. They make vague allusions to the nature of their circumstances and to the reasons for meeting Godot, but the audience never learns who Godot is or why he is important.
They are soon interrupted by the arrival of Pozzo, a cruel but lyrically gifted man who claims to own the land they stand on, and his servant Lucky, whom he appears to control by means of a lengthy rope. Pozzo sits down to feast on chicken, and afterwords throws the bones to the two tramps. He entertains them by directing Lucky to perform a lively dance, and then deliver an ex tempore lecture on the theories of Bishop Berkeley. After Pozzo and Lucky depart, a boy arrives with a message he says is from Godot that he will not be coming today, but will come tomorrow. The second act follows a similar pattern to the first, but when Pozzo and Lucky arrive, Pozzo has inexplicably gone blind and Lucky has gone mute. Again the boy arrives and announces that Godot will not appear, also confessing that Godot beats him and makes him sleep in a barn. The much quoted ending of the play might be said to sum up the stasis of the whole work:
Vladimir: Well, shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let's go.
They do not move.
I recall seeing that play in College when I was MUCH younger, in the first scene taking place in the Spring one Tramp takes off his boots with a sigh of relief and comfort. In the second scene the same Tramp returning spies the boots still sitting there and is delighted that they fit.
What we have witnessed in New Orleans is Waiting for Godot/Fema.
According to an article I read in the Wall Street Journal Marketplace, in many respects the New Orleans Evacuation could be a model for other Major Metropolitan Evacuations. Of 1.4 Million residents over 80% were evacuated without much trouble. Those were the ones with access to vehicles and the lessons of past traffic jams exiting Large Cities were used to good advantage by making all of the lanes outbound.
Those who did NOT have access to vehicles were another story, they sat in collecting points Waiting for Godot/Fema.
What we experienced is a complete breakdown of Local Authority. I do not want a Federal Government with the Power to Arbitrarily assume total control in any area of the United States it wishes to at its own whim. We MUST learn from this experience and spread the Libertarian values of Individual Responsibility and Local Authority, instead of Waiting for Godot.
Convoy greeted with applause and anger
NEW ORLEANS- More than four days after Hurricane Katrina struck, the National Guard arrived in force Friday with food, water and weapons, churning through the floodwaters in a vast truck convoy that was met with both catcalls and cries of “Thank you, Jesus!” from the suffering multitudes.
But 46-year-old Michael Levy said, “They should have been here days ago. I ain’t glad to see ’em” — words that brought shouts of “Hell, yeah!” from those around him. He added: “We’ve been sleeping on the ... ground like rats. I say burn this whole ... city down.”
National Guard Troops started out from pre-positioned points as soon as the wind velocities dropped below 50 miles per hour in many places they had to cut through debris and downed trees blocking the roads. This is the thanks they get?
"This is a national disgrace," said New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
Ebbert's job is to coordinate New Orleans' response to emergencies. Somebody should show him this picture and tell him to stop blaming everyone but himself:
And finally this from Mayor Nagin himself:
"I need reinforcements," he pleaded. "I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. ...
I've done it all man, and I'll tell you man, I keep hearing that it's coming. This is coming, that is coming. And my answer to that today is BS, where is the beef? Because there is no beef in this city. "
Nagin said, "Get every Greyhound bus in the country and get them moving."
Some need to ask these two men WHY they let ever City Vehicle. every City Transport Bus, every School Bus sit waiting to be covered by flood waters instead of USING them to move people!
Then they should be horsewhipped.
If they had to, they should have loaded people onto dump trucks to move them out of the reach of the storm.
What can we learn from this debacle? We learned good lessons the last few times about how not to clog the roads during an evacuation. Now if we
are lucky we have learned like Charity, Emergency Planning MUST begin at HOME.
Does your City have a Plan in effect to use City Vehicles and Buses to evacuate your City in an emergency? If not then maybe YOU had better do something about it.
I read in the WSJ about a family who went back to their house as SOON as the Storm passed, the woman complained they had no electricity, they had no water and they had no food. They also did not seem to be in too much of a hurry to get to where these things were.
So the question is are we going Take Responsibility for our own future and see to these matters OURSELVES? Or are we going to Wait for Godot
Vladimir: Well, shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let's go.
They do not move.
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Updated: Saturday, 3 September 2005 12:39 AM CDT