Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett

Beckett refrained from elaborating on the characters beyond what he had written in the play. He once recalled that when Sir Ralph Richardson "wanted the low-down on Pozzo, his home address and curriculum vitae, and seemed to make the forthcoming of this and similar information the condition of his condescending to illustrate the part of Vladimir ... I told him that all I knew about Pozzo was in the text, that if I had known more I would have put it in the text, and that was true also of the other characters."[9]

Vladimir and Estragon

When Beckett started writing he did not have a visual image of Vladimir and Estragon. They are never referred to as tramps in the text, though they are often performed in tramps’ costumes on stage. Roger Blin advises: "Beckett heard their voices, but he couldn't describe his characters to me. [He said]: 'The only thing I'm sure of is that they're wearing bowlers.' "[10] "The bowler hat was of course de rigueur for men in many social contexts when Beckett was growing up in Foxrock, and [his father] commonly wore one."[11] The play does indicate that the clothes worn at least by Estragon are shabby. When told by Vladimir that he should have been a poet, Estragon says he was, gestures to his rags, and asks if it were not obvious.

There are no physical descriptions of either of the two characters; however, the text indicates that Vladimir is the heavier of the pair: the contemplation-of-suicide scene tells us exactly that. The bowlers and other broadly comic aspects of their personae have reminded modern audiences of Laurel and Hardy, who occasionally played tramps in their films. "The hat-passing game in Waiting for Godot and Lucky's inability to think without his hat on are two obvious Beckett derivations from Laurel and Hardy – a substitution of form for essence, covering for reality", wrote Gerald Mast in The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies.[12] Their "blather", which includes Hiberno-English idioms, indicated that they are both Irish.[13]

Vladimir stands through most of the play whereas Estragon sits down numerous times and even dozes off. "Estragon is inert and Vladimir restless."[14] Vladimir looks at the sky and muses on religious or philosophical matters. Estragon "belongs to the stone",[15] preoccupied with mundane things such as what he can get to eat and how to ease his physical aches and pains; he is direct, intuitive. The monotonous, ritualistic means by which Estragon continuously sits upon the stone may be likened to the constant nail filing carried out by Winnie in Happy Days, another of Beckett's plays, both actions representing the slow, deliberate erosion of the characters' lives. He finds it hard to remember but can recall certain things when prompted, e.g., when Vladimir asks: "Do you remember the Gospels?"[16] Estragon tells Vladimir about the coloured maps of the Holy Land and that he planned to honeymoon by the Dead Sea; it is his short-term memory that is poorest and suggests that he may, in fact, be suffering from Alzheimer's disease.[17] Al Alvarez writes: "But perhaps Estragon's forgetfulness is the cement binding their relationship together. He continually forgets, Vladimir continually reminds him; between them they pass the time."[18] Estragon's forgetfulness affords the author a certain narrative utility also, allowing for the mundane, empty conversations held between him and Vladimir to continue seamlessly. They have been together for fifty years but when asked by Pozzo they do not reveal their actual ages. Vladimir's life is not without its discomforts too but he is the more resilient of the pair. "Vladimir's pain is primarily mental anguish, which would thus account for his voluntary exchange of his hat for Lucky's, thus signifying Vladimir's symbolic desire for another person's thoughts."[19] These characterizations, for some, represented the act of thinking or mental state (Vladimir) and physical things or the body (Estragon).[20] This is visually depicted by Vladimir's continuous attention to his hat and Estragon to his boots. While the two characters are temperamentally opposite, with their differing responses to a situation, they are both essential as demonstrated in the way Vladimir's metaphysical musings were balanced by Estragon's physical demands.[21]

The above characterizations, particularly that which concerns their existential situation, are also demonstrated in one of the play's recurring themes, which is sleep.[22] There are two instances when Estragon falls asleep in the play and has nightmares, about which he wanted to tell Vladimir when he woke. The latter refuses to hear it since he could not tolerate the sense of entrapment experienced by the dreamer during each episode. This idea of entrapment supports the view that the setting of the play may be understood more clearly as dream-like landscape, or, a form of Purgatory, from which neither man can escape. One interpretation noted the link between the two characters' experiences and the way they represent them: the impotence in Estragon's nightmare and Vladimir's predicament of waiting as his companion sleeps.[22] It is also said that sleep and impatience allow the spectators to distinguish between the two main characters, that sleep expresses Estragon's focus on his sensations while Vladimir's restlessness shows his focus on his thoughts.[23] This particular aspect involving sleep is indicative of what some called a pattern of duality in the play.[24] In the case of the protagonists, the duality involves the body and the mind, making the characters complementary.[23]

Throughout the play the couple refer to each other by the pet names "Didi" and "Gogo", although the boy addresses Vladimir as "Mister Albert". Beckett originally intended to call Estragon "Lévy" but when Pozzo questions him he gives his name as "Magrégor, André"[25] and also responds to "Catulle" in French or "Catullus" in the first Faber edition. This became "Adam" in the American edition. Beckett's only explanation was that he was "fed up with Catullus".[26]

Vivian Mercier described Waiting for Godot as a play which "has achieved a theoretical impossibility – a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice."[27] Mercier once questioned Beckett on the language used by the pair: "It seemed to me...he made Didi and Gogo sound as if they had earned PhDs. 'How do you know they hadn't?' was his reply."[28] They clearly have known better times, such as a visit to the Eiffel Tower and grape-harvesting by the Rhône; this 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."[29]

Pozzo and Lucky

Pozzo and Lucky have been together for sixty years.[30] Pozzo controls Lucky by means of an extremely long rope, which he jerks and tugs if Lucky is the least bit slow.

It has been contended that "Pozzo and Lucky are simply Didi and Gogo writ large", unbalanced as their relationship is.[31] However, Pozzo's dominance is superficial; "upon closer inspection, it becomes evident that Lucky always possessed more influence in the relationship, for he danced, and more importantly, thought – not as a service, but in order to fill a vacant need of Pozzo: he committed all of these acts for Pozzo. As such, since the first appearance of the duo, the true slave had always been Pozzo."[19] Pozzo credits Lucky with having given him all the culture, refinement, and ability to reason that he possesses. His rhetoric has been learned by rote. Pozzo's "party piece" on the sky is a clear example: as his memory crumbles, he finds himself unable to continue under his own steam.

Little is learned about Pozzo besides the fact that he is on his way to the fair to sell his slave, Lucky. From Beckett's own life experiences in Ireland and wartime France, commentators such as Hugh Kenner have identified Pozzo as representing German behaviour in occupied France, or alternatively as a bullying and conceited Protestant Ascendancy landlord.[32] When translating his original French dialogue into English, Beckett took pains to introduce Irish idiom (specifically, Dubliners' idiom): Pozzo's pipe is made by Kapp and Peterson, Dublin's best-known tobacconists (which he refers to as a "briar" but which Estragon calls by the dialect word dudeen). Not only is his Hiberno-English text more colourful than the French original, but it emphasizes the differences in the characters' social standing.[33][34] Pozzo confesses to a poor memory but it is more a result of an abiding self-absorption. "Pozzo is a character who has to overcompensate. That's why he overdoes things ... and his overcompensation has to do with a deep insecurity in him. These were things Beckett said, psychological terms he used."[35] Beckett's advice to the American director Alan Schneider was: "[Pozzo] is a hypomaniac and the only way to play him is to play him mad."[14]

"In his [English] translation ... Beckett struggled to retain the French atmosphere as much as possible, so that he delegated all the English names and places to Lucky, whose own name, he thought, suggested such a correlation".[36]

Lucky appears to be the subservient member of their relationship, at least initially, carrying out every task that Pozzo bids him to do without question, portraying a form of "dog-like devotion" to his master.[37] He struggles with a heavy suitcase, falling on a number of occasions, only to be helped and held up by Estragon and Vladimir.

Lucky speaks only once in the play and it is in response to Pozzo's order to "think" for Estragon and Vladimir. The ostensibly abstract philosophical meanderings supplied to the audience by Lucky during his speech have been described as "a flood of completely meaningless gibberish" by Martin Esslin in his essay, "The Theatre of the Absurd".[38] Esslin suggests that this seemingly involuntary, philosophical spouting is an example of the actor's working "against the dialogue rather than with it",[38] providing grounds for Esslin's claims that the "fervor of delivery" in the play must "stand in a dialectical contrast to the pointlessness of the meaning of the lines".[38]

Jean Martin, who originated the role of Lucky in Paris in 1953, spoke to a doctor named Marthe Gautier, who was working at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. Martin asked if she knew of a physiological reason that would explain Lucky's voice as it was written in the text. Gautier suggested Parkinson's disease, which, she said, "begins with a trembling, which gets more and more noticeable, until later the patient can no longer speak without the voice shaking". Martin began incorporating this idea into his rehearsals.[39] Beckett and the director may not have been completely convinced, but they expressed no objections.[40] When Martin mentioned to the playwright that he was "playing Lucky as if he were suffering from Parkinson's", Beckett responded by saying "Yes, of course", and mentioning that his own mother had Parkinson's.[41]

When Beckett was asked why Lucky was so named, he replied, "I suppose he is lucky to have no more expectations..."[42]

The Boy

The cast list specifies only one boy.

The boy in Act I, a local lad, assures Vladimir that this is the first time he has seen him. He says he was not there the previous day. He confirms he works for Mr. Godot as a goatherd. His brother, whom Godot beats, is a shepherd. Godot feeds both of them and allows them to sleep in his hayloft.

The boy in Act II also assures Vladimir that it was not he who called upon them the day before. He insists that this too is his first visit. When Vladimir asks what Godot does the boy tells him, "He does nothing, sir."[43] We also learn he has a white beard – possibly, the boy is not certain. This boy also has a brother who it seems is sick but there is no clear evidence to suggest that his brother is the boy who came in Act I or the one who came the day before that.

Whether the boy from Act I is the same boy from Act II or not, both boys are polite yet timid. In the first act, the boy, despite arriving while Pozzo and Lucky are still about, does not announce himself until after Pozzo and Lucky leave, saying to Vladimir and Estragon that he waited for the other two to leave out of fear of the two men and of Pozzo's whip; the boy does not arrive early enough in Act II to see either Lucky or Pozzo. In both acts, the boy seems hesitant to speak very much, saying mostly "Yes Sir" or "No Sir", and winds up exiting by running away.

Godot

The identity of Godot has been the subject of much debate. "When Colin Duckworth asked Beckett point-blank whether Pozzo was Godot, the author replied: 'No. It is just implied in the text, but it's not true.' "[44]

Deirdre Bair says that though "Beckett will never discuss the implications of the title", she suggests two stories that both may have at least partially inspired it. The first is that because feet are a recurring theme in the play, Beckett has said the title was suggested to him by the slang French term for boot: "godillot, godasse". The second story, according to Bair, is that Beckett once encountered a group of spectators at the French Tour de France bicycle race, who told him "Nous attendons Godot" – they were waiting for a competitor whose name was Godot.[45]

"Beckett said to Peter Woodthorpe that he regretted calling the absent character 'Godot', because of all the theories involving God to which this had given rise."[46] "I also told [Ralph] Richardson that if by Godot I had meant God I would [have] said God, and not Godot. This seemed to disappoint him greatly."[47] That said, Beckett did once concede, "It would be fatuous of me to pretend that I am not aware of the meanings attached to the word 'Godot', and the opinion of many that it means 'God'. But you must remember – I wrote the play in French, and if I did have that meaning in my mind, it was somewhere in my unconscious and I was not overtly aware of it."[48] (Note: the French word for 'God' is 'Dieu'.) However, "Beckett has often stressed the strong unconscious impulses that partly control his writing; he has even spoken of being 'in a trance' when he writes."[49] While Beckett stated he originally had no knowledge of Balzac's play Mercadet ou le faiseur, whose character Godeau has an identical-sounding name and is involved in a similar situation, it has been suggested he may have been instead influenced by The Lovable Cheat,[50] a minor adaptation of Mercadet starring Buster Keaton, whose works Beckett had admired,[51] and whom he later sought out for Film.

Unlike elsewhere in Beckett's work, no bicycle appears in this play, but Hugh Kenner in his essay "The Cartesian Centaur"[52] reports that Beckett once, when asked about the meaning of Godot, mentioned "a veteran racing cyclist, bald, a 'stayer', recurrent placeman in town-to-town and national championships, Christian name elusive, surname Godeau, pronounced, of course, no differently from Godot." Waiting for Godot is clearly not about track cycling, but it is said that Beckett himself did wait for French cyclist Roger Godeau (1920–2000; a professional cyclist from 1943 to 1961), outside the velodrome in Roubaix.[53][54]

Of the two boys who work for Godot only one appears safe from beatings, "Beckett said, only half-jokingly, that one of Estragon's feet was saved".[55]

The name "Godot" is pronounced in Britain and Ireland with the emphasis on the first syllable, /ˈɡɒdoʊ/ GOD-oh;[2] in North America it is usually pronounced with an emphasis on the second syllable, /ɡəˈdoʊ/ gə-DOH. Beckett himself said the emphasis should be on the first syllable, and that the North American pronunciation is a mistake.[56] Georges Borchardt, Beckett's literary agent, and who represents Beckett's literary estate, has always pronounced "Godot" in the French manner, with equal emphasis on both syllables. Borchardt checked with Beckett's nephew, Edward, who told him his uncle pronounced it that way as well.[2] The 1956 Broadway production split the difference by having Vladimir pronounce "Godot" with equal stress on both syllables (goh-doh) and Estragon pronounce it with the accent on the second syllable (g'doh).[57][58]