Rupal Arora

Prof. Abhija Ghosh

BA (hons.) English

III Year, 2017/1404

WAITING FOR GODOT

Samuel Beckett, a famous novelist, playwright, poet, director and essayist who wrote a good
number of novels, plays and other literary works was born in 1906 in Ireland and died in 1989 in
Paris, France. Beckett was awarded Nobel Prize in 1969 in literature. His notable works are
murphy, Molloy, Malone Dies, waiting for Godot, Watt, Endgame and many more. Beckett’s
most popular and significant play Waiting for Godot was first written in French in1949 and then
in English in 1954.

This play has been performed as a drama of the absurd with astonishing success in Europe,
America and the rest of the world in the post-world war era. Martin Esslin calls it “one of the
successes of the post war theater” (Martin, 1980). Waiting for Godot is an ambiguous play and
ideological basis of this ambiguity is that the play reveals human suffering, exploitation and
oppressive effects of modern capitalism on human beings. It celebrates at the same time that
industrial capitalism has victimized human beings, who have become exploited, suffered,
inhuman bewildered and threatened by powerful exploiting forces of the capitalists.

It was during the second world-war that countries like France, Britain, Italy and Germany got
maxed out on their resources and it was in 1929 that the world faced the Great Economic
Depression. Post the world war, America emerged as a major power and supported the idea of
capitalism. Capitalism is believed to be the industrial version of Feudalism – where land owners
exploited the land workers by providing them bare of recourses for their own survival. The
working hours were increased to a point where it wasn’t possible to work anymore and even in
such pressure, the working conditions were almost neglected. It was Karl max who promoted the
idea of capitalism who saw capitalism as a system with private ownership for the means of
production, extraction of surplus values for owning class for the purpose of capital accumulation,
wage based labor, and – at least as far as commodities is concerned, market based. Marxism and
his theory of capitalism is highly criticized on the basis that even though it provides economic
freedom, it steals intellectuals of social and political freedom.

The kind of capitalism utilized in the play is within the broader philosophical political sense, and
not within the narrower economic sense – a free market. The complex dramatic structure of
expecting Godot is predicated upon symbols and ideological content, which reveals in existential
terms of angst, fear of freedom and absurdity of human existence. The vertical repression and
layering or sedimentation is that the dominant structure of the text of the play. The late modernist
bourgeois ideology is itself an ideological expression of capitalism and its reification of lifestyle,
which is found within the play within the increasing fragmentation of capitalist socio-cultural
ethos. At an equivalent time, the text’s bleak references to at least one of the foremost important
socio-political themes in depiction of Master-Slave relationships between Pozzo and Lucky, shed
light on class relations between the exploiting and exploited classes and nations in modern
capitalist world.
Fredric Jameson interprets the play as “The Beckett’s play involves not one but two pseudo-
couples, the relatively egalitarian team of the two clochards, being episodically juxtaposed with a
very different and decidedly non-egalitarian pair in the person of Pozzo-the master presumably
signifying England and Lucky-the slave, as Ireland and its intellectuals” (Jameson, 364)

In the first act of the play, Pozzo is immediately seen in terms of his authoritarian figure. He
lords over the others, he's decisive, powerful and assured. He gives the illusion that he knows
exactly where he's going, and the way exactly to urge there. He seems ‘on top’ of each situation.
When Pozzo and Lucky first make appearance, it's found that Pozzo drives Lucky by means of
rope tied around his neck. the primary impression of the two characters shown walking round the
stage is not any but an owner walking his pet. Lucky is carrying variety of things owned by his
master around his neck. Pozzo holds a whip in his hand to regulate Lucky; this only signifies
how mistreated Lucky is and any act of his that would be considered as ill-behavior by his
master, he's beaten up with the whip. Pozzo never comprehends Lucky’s feelings regardless of
how hard working he's or has been. Later it's also shown how Lucky is beaten up – brutally and
bitterly for increasing profits for his Pozzo. Thus, within the beginning only, Pozzo is shown as
an authoritarian and a representative of capitalism.

Beckett gives many hints where the attitude of individuals from contemporary society is shown
against the lower/working class. Lucky’s keenness makes Waiting for Godot a Marxist play
where it's made clear that the labor people are for the mankind. Beckett within the play portrays
in an ingenious and realistic mode concerning for material interest generally and Marxist
especially. Lucky faithfully works hard day and night to satisfy Pozzo but finally experiences
nothing but bitterness. Pozzo undoubtedly symbolizes nothing but the pitilessness and therefore
the bourgeois mechanism of the capitalists. When Pozzo and Lucky first appear on the stage, it
doesn’t take the audience long to acknowledge the connection between them, which is that the
Hegelian dialect of the master-slave relationship ‘Lucky carries a heavy bag, a folding stool, a
picnic basket and a greatcoat. Pozzo a whip’ (Beckett, 18).

Although, Pozzo seems more slave owner than anything else, he could be labelled as well, in
terms of social classes, a capitalist figure in whom domination is typically exemplified. “I am
bringing him to fair, where I hope to get a good prize’ (Beckett, 19). In capitalism the main
motive to produce goods is to sell them in the market for a profit, not to satisfy people’s needs.
This, Pozzo never values Lucky for his hard work, rather, once in the play he treats Lucky in a
very ill manner addressing him as a ‘pig’, ‘hog’ etc. “Walk or crawl! (he kicks Lucky) Up pig!”
(Act I, Beckett)

Pozzo treats lucky worse than an animal. Pozzo’s superiority is also seen in the manner in which
he eats the chicken and then casts the bones to Lucky with an air of complete omnipotence
actually shows lack of humanity in Pozzo. Pozzo tells Estragon who like his friend Vladimir, is
unable to do anything to save himself and who shows uncontrollable greed for the chicken bones
thrown on the ground by Pozzo that, ‘in theory bones go to the carrier’ and the carrier of course
is Lucky (Beckett, 27). Even when asked why Lucky does not keep his luggage down, Pozzo
replies ‘he wants to impress me so that I can keep him’ (Beckett, 31) this is yet another instance
that shows Pozzo’s lack of admiration towards Lucky.

Pozzo’s greatest concern is his dignity who wants to retain his capitalist approach behaving with
the tone of a super lord to the tramps, even with Estragon and Vladimir, the first time Pozzo sees
them, he does recognize them as human beings but inferior to him. This image reinforces his
authoritarian approach as a true capitalist ignoring the identity of a human being. Besides Lucky,
he even rebukes the tramps for asking him a question. This only proves his capitalist mind and in
it, the exploitation of labour.

BIBLOGRAPHY

 Chatterjee, Abhinaba. (2013). Camus’ Absurdity in Beckett’s Play: Waiting for Godot in
Lapis Lazuli: An international literary journal (LLILJ), Vol. 3/No.2/ autumn, pp.196-20
 Beckett, S. (1952). Waiting for Godot. London: Faber and Faber Ltd
 Esslin, Martin. (1980). the Theatre of the Absurd. New York, USA: The Penguin Books
 Jameson, Fredric. (2007). Modernist Papers .London, Great Britain: Verso