Pozzo and Lucky, Control and Chaos: Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’

I recently heard it expressed that freedom from totalitarian control fosters human creativity and expression, and therefore, the arts could be conceptualised as the highest aspiration of democracy. This, as far as I am concerned, is undeniable. Recently, I posted to this website an essay entitled Henry James’ Solution to the Novel Problem, in which I explored how the American writer stood against those who believed artistic authenticity could be achieved through authorial restriction, and instead insisted that the very merit of the novel was that it allowed for the ultimate form of liberated, individualistic expression in literature. (It is no coincidence that James, as well as his great influence William Dean Howells, who were both great champions of man’s inherent right to artistically express themselves in whatever way they desired, were also born from the only nation founded singly on an idea of democracy for all.) 

The natural state of the human mind, it seems, is to create, and only when no exterior encumbrances are imposed upon it can we fully realise our potential. It is why we yearn so desperately for individuality and liberty— and why our soul grows so sickly when forced to live in a community where freedoms are suppressed and the individual is treated merely as part of a mindless, monolithic hive-mind.

These ruminations remind me of a play that I recently reread, and that is likely to be one of the most well-known plays of the 20^th Century. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot tells of two tramps, who are sitting on the side of a road in the middle of a seemingly purgatorial wasteland, and are unable to will themselves to do anything else until the elusive and enigmatic figure of Godot appears to meet them. (Why such an apparently illustrious figure would arrange to meet two tramps in the middle of nowhere is never addressed, for rapidly obvious reasons.) 

However, there are two other figures within the play that somehow manage to be even more nebulous and obscure by the names of Pozzo and Lucky. The former is a belligerent and obstinate man of seeming authority, who has the latter tethered by a rope around his neck and bosses him around to do his bidding. Lucky, on the other hand, is an apparent savage, an illiterate idiot, until he wears his hat and he is suddenly able to recite pages upon pages of eloquent and entirely incoherent babble until the headpiece is removed again. What this completely absurd duo is intended to represent is as heated and until-now-unprofitable a debate as that surrounding the titular character himself, and keeping the thoughts in the first paragraph of this scribbling in mind, I wish to flip my two cents into the ring.

There are some interpretations that label the overbearing Pozzo as capital and the subservient Lucky as labour, or as the Freudian superego and id, or between wealth and the artist. In my estimation, all three of these readings are somewhat true, and yet do not go far enough. I instead believe that Lucky represents the chaotic, primal potential of the human capacity to create, and Pozzo the ordering social structures that necessarily keep that in check. In an ideal world, these two characters would exist in harmony, and once they may have done so— but Beckett’s is not an ideal world, and so it seems that this duo are now slowly robbing one another of their lives.

The interpretation of Pozzo as the high class and Lucky as the worker is an obvious one; the moment we meet them both, we watch Pozzo order Lucky around, having him fetch a stool, his hat, and food and drink. Pozzo explains that Lucky does not ever put down his bags, as he wishes to continually impress his master so that he won’t be sold at the market (Pozzo is considering doing this anyway). And yet, this interpretation does not account for why Lucky is at times so artistically dextrous, nor why between the two encounters with Pozzo he falls blind and implies that it is because his menial is slowly killing him. Nor, of course, why they are always followed by the boy telling the tramps that Godot is not to appear today.

All of this, I will attempt to answer in a very short space of time. I hope at least a little of it will be somewhat cogent.

The relationship between Pozzo and Lucky is a very interesting one. It appears at first that Pozzo is simply a tyrannical master to the inferior Lucky, and wishes simply to exhaust Lucky of all he’s worth, after which he will sell him on at the fair. However, there are moments that imply that their dichotomy was once far more harmonious, mutually beneficial even, and that now Lucky wields far more power over Pozzo than the master would like to admit. A telling moment is when Pozzo breaks down in front of the tramps; he speaks of how Lucky taught him to speak in poetry (an odd decision on Beckett’s part, if in the slave he is simply characterising the savage id), but when Vladimir chastises the man for treating Lucky as if he were dispensable, Pozzo begins to groan that Lucky is a ‘terrible’ creature to be around, and he is driving him ‘mad’. Now, it is obvious that Pozzo is a very unreliable source, and this could very well be a false attempt to turn Vladimir’s abhorrence into pity; but as later on, Pozzo appears blind and even more closely bound (literally— the rope is shorter) to Lucky’s influence, it seems that this claim is proven true.

The character of Lucky, meanwhile, is one that one face value may seem very simple; at once comic, but also pitiable; and yet beneath the surface I find him greatly disturbing, and very much in control of the dynamic. Interestingly, it is implied that he is far older than Pozzo, judging by the long, white hair hidden beneath his hat. He is obsequious and mute, except for sudden bursts of furious violence. He appears dumb, except for tirades of illogical poeticisms. He bears overwhelming potential for acts of terrifying energy and savagery, housed within an unpredictable and unstable human form. And, as one might expect, the greatest insight into Lucky’s mind— to the extent one could argue he even has one— is found in the longest portion of dialogue he has, his infamous monologue itself. 

It is a bizarre tirade, perfectly encapsulating the concept of absurdity, for it seems at once to have no meaning, and yet mean everything at once. It is entirely devoid of any structural restrictions provided by our language (it has no punctuation of any kind) except for its use of existing words, and even then, some of the words are made up and most do not appear to fit together. It ranges from topics on eighteen-hole golf to the existence of God, to deteriorating into complete incoherency, and listening to it must be comparable to how Pandora felt when she opened her box and all the bad things in the world poured out unstoppably over her.

Certain people have deemed, perhaps correctly, that the monologue is there to sum up the entire point of the play— if Godot is God, then he represents the absurdity of trying to search for an omnipotent being to solve all of one’s problems in a meaningless universe. As such, Lucky’s speech is similarly meaningless. But following my previous train of thought, there is one aspect of his monologue that is incredibly meaningful in understanding the real purpose of Lucky’s character, and it happens to be a phrase that he repeats more than any other— ‘for reasons unknown’.

Pozzo, as a symbol for institutional order, is rooted in the social and the knowable. He speaks with authority; indeed he himself says he enjoys nothing more than socialising with new people, he is (mostly) polite, and he is ruthlessly pragmatic. As the Yang to his Ying, Lucky is the reverse of this. He is an entirely unknown entity, not governed by logic or rationality, and incapable of normal social interaction or emotion (such as kicking Estragon when he tries to console him). He is the primal sub-layer beneath the charade of civilisation that human beings have painstakingly built in order to coexist with one another, and as such, deals in those things that our conscious minds are not able to rationalise with modern thought. Society can (and does) thrive with a world of Pozzos, but in a world of Luckys, everyone would tear themselves apart. Pozzo, or the modern civilising structure, must be there to reign Lucky in, or else the whole of humanity would descend into chaos.

And yet, it is also from this raw, shapeless, primordial instinct deep within the human disposition that true artistic spirit can emerge. Pozzo cannot speak in the way that Lucky does— he merely operates within the knowable, and therefore, the uninventive. It is only Lucky who can truly innovate, and speak of things that cannot be understood, but can be felt. Without Lucky, Pozzo would stagnate into mundanity and destitution. 

Which, of course, is exactly what is happening in the second act. Pozzo’s control has become too tyrannical, too cold to the vibrant human spirit within Lucky, and thus he is slowly strangling the life out of his menial. Whereas once he profited from the sublime beauty of Lucky’s artistic gifts, he has now grown terrified of the chaos within his slave— perhaps even loathsome of how closely bound he is to this irrational and unfathomable force— and so tries ever more to keep him in check. But all this does is limit Lucky’s ability to express his creative potential, ‘silencing’ and ‘censoring’ his exclamations and driving Lucky to less favourable and ever more frightening and capricious manifestations of his volatility. After all, the creative spirit has the potential to tear down as much as it does build up, and when the healthier, latter road is blocked off, the former will surely provide an outlet instead.

As such, I agree that Pozzo and Lucky can be viewed as two halves of a whole. Vladimir calls Pozzo ‘all of humanity’ in Act 2, but I believe that this is true of the pair instead; when operating together, they constitute a healthily balanced human spirit, but when in discordance, they both wither into oblivion. Last week, I wrote a scribbling on the presence of the Tao in The Man in the High Castle, and I believe Beckett’s philosophy here to be somewhat similar. When the ordering force of Pozzo silences Lucky, then the human constitution becomes cut off from the deep, innovating, rejuvenating spirit at its core, and is blinded by the stagnation of its existing restrictive beliefs; thus, as Lucky grows mute, Pozzo becomes blind.

As the revitalising, chaotic force is suppressed by the governing body of Pozzo, and the ordering structure subsequently collapses under its own weight into corruption and decay, the human disposition loses all source of meaning with which to orient themselves. This is the reason that after both appearances of the pair, the boy appears to tell the tramps that Godot will not be appearing. Whilst the human constitution remains at war with itself, we will never be able to find a higher purpose. And while good governance can allow art to flourish, control exerted by a rope around the neck will only cause the controller to go blind.

Thank you for reading,