Comic and Farcical Elements in Waiting for Godot

I

Music-hall Comedy

Vladimir and Estragon—who call each other Gogo and Didi—are clearly derived from the pairs of cross-talk comedians of English music-halls. Their dialogue has the peculiar repetitive quality of the cross-talk of comedians’ patter:

Estragon.        So long as one knows.

Vladimir.         One can bide one’s time.

Estragon.        One knows what to expect.

Vladimir.         No further need to worry.           (Page 38)

And the parallel to the music-hall and the circus is even explicitly stated:

Vladimir.         It’s worse than being at the theatre.

Estragon.        The circus.

Vladimir.         The music-hall.

Estragon.        The circus.                                  (Page 35)

In accordance with the traditions of the music-hall or the circus, there is an element of crudely physical humour: Estragon loses his trousers; there is a prolonged gag involving three hats that are put on and off and handed on in a sequence of seemingly unending confusion (Pages 71-2); and there is an abundance of pratfalls (one critic having listed as many as forty-five stage-directions indicating that one of the characters leaves the upright position which symbolises the dignity of man.)

II

Comparison With the Comedians—Laurel and Hardy

According to an eminent critic, Estragon and Vladimir in their bowler hats, one of them marvellously incompetent, the other an ineffective man of the world devoted to his friend’s care, greatly resemble the two famous cinema comedians of the 1930s: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, whose troubles with such things as hats, and boots were notorious, and whose dialogue was spoken very slowly on the assumption that the human understanding could not be expected to work at lightning speed. Those two comedians journeyed, undertook quests, had adventures; their friendship, tried by fits of irritation and annoyance, never really collapsed. They seemed not to become older or wiser; they were always in a state of nervous agitation. Neither of them was especially competent, but Hardy invariably made a show of being competent. Laurel was defeated by the most trifling requirements. In one of their pictures occurred the following bit of dialogue:

Hardy.             Get on the mule.

Laurel.                        What ?

Hardy.             Get on the mule.

This dialogue comes quite close to the following exchange towards the end of Beckett’s play:

Vladimir.         Pull on your trousers.

Estragon.        What?

Vladimir.         Pull on your trousers.

Estragon.        You want me to pull off my trousers?

Vladimir.         Pull ON your trousers.               (Page 94)

In the same film there was much fuss with Laurel’s boots the holes in which he patched with rotten meat, thus attracting unwanted dogs. Beckett’s play begins with Estragon struggling to take off his boots and saying: “Nothing to be done”. Indeed, insofar as the play has a message, it is more or less contained in these words: “Nothing to be done”. And yet the two tramps go on doing if we can use the word “doing” for their activities.

Boots At Last Pulled Off

We also learn that if Estragon has chronic foot trouble, Vladimir has chronic bladder trouble. The dialogue comes round again to the theme words: “Nothing to be done”, this time spoken by Vladimir; and, as he speaks, these words, the action also comes round to where it started, with Estragon by a supreme effort falsifying the words and managing to pull off his boots. That is one thing accomplished anyhow.

III

Verbal Antics

The dialogue in Waiting for Godot shows certain features which are characteristic of Beckett’s manner. One of the verbal antics employed is the device of cancellation or qualification. On two occasions, for instance, Vladimir qualifies his admission of ignorance about the nature of the tree:

Estragon.        What is it?

Vladimir.         I don’t know. A willow.             (Page 14)

Again:

Estragon.        (Looking at the tree). What is it?

Vladimir.         It’s the tree.

Estragon.        Yes, but what kind?

Vladimir.         I don’t know. A willow.             (Page 93)

On both occasions, after saying that he does not know what tree it is, he adds-”A willow”. (A similar hesitation perhaps explains why some of the play’s many questions terminate in a full-stop rather than a question-mark).

Comic Misunderstandings

Much of the dialogue follows the inconsequential spontaneity of everyday speech in which the different participants tend to pursue a line of thought independently of one another. Many comic misunderstandings result from this kind of technique. There is, for instance, the exchange preceding Lucky’s monologue, where Pozzo asks what he can do for these honest fellows, the tramps. Estragon would be satisfied with ten francs, while Vladimir remarks: “We are not beggars” (Page 39). Such comic misunderstandings are pure vaudeville. Here is another example:

Vladimir.         Where are your boots?

Estragon.        I must have thrown them away.

Vladimir.         When?

Estragon         I don’t know.

Vladimir.         Why?

Estragon         (Exasperated). I don’tknow why I don’t know!

Vladimir.         No, I mean why did you throw them away?                                               (Page 67)

In such bits of dialogue time is lost through confusion over the precise meaning of words. “Are you friends?” blind Pozzo asks in Act II, provoking Estragon to noisy laughter: “He wants to know if we are friends!” Vladimir mediates here as on other occasions by pointing out, “No, he means friends of his”             (Page 85)

Music-hall Cross-talk

The dialogue owes a great deal in fact to the well-established music-hall cross-talk in which two characters—a “straight” man and a “funny” man—become entangled in complexities. Estragon tries to explain to Vladimir that since the latter is the heavier of the two he should logically try hanging himself from the bough first. “If it hangs you it’ll hang anything”, Estragon concludes. The comedy of this is reinforced when the initial basis of the argument is itself brought into question. “But am I heavier than you?” asks Vladimir. Another familiar music-hall joke is that of mirrored repetition. Both Estragon and Vladimir, for example, almost simultaneously shake, and look closely into, a favourite object (Vladimir his hat, and Estragon his boot), and both men exclaim: “Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!” within a minute of each other (Pages 10-11). Here is another bit of comic cross-talk of the music-hall variety.

Estragon.        And we?

Vladimir.         I beg your pardon?

Estragon.        I said, And we?

Vladimir.         I don’t understand.

Estragon.        Where do we come in?

Vladimir.         Come in?

Estragon.        Take your time.                           (Page 19)

Another form of music-hall comedy was the monologue. In this play it is Pozzo who makes use of it, in his discourse on the twilight which ends gloomily: “That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth” (Page 38) and also in his speech in Act II about life taking up but an instant as “they give birth astride of a grave” (Page 89), though the latter piece is rather sombre. But Vladimir too provides an example in the comic banter which begins, “Let us not waste our time in idle discourse”, and proceeds to do just that (Pages 79-80).

Circus Humour

The circus is another source of the unique brand of the humour of Waiting for Godot. (Jean Anouilh compared this play to the Thoughts of Pascal performed as a comedy sketch for clowns). The totters, the pratfalls, the tumbles, Estragon’s trouser-dropping, Vladimir’s clumsy gait, Lucky’s palsy and Pozzo’s cracking of the whip—these are all lifted straight from the clowning in a circus. The amount of gesture in a play supposed to be devoid of action is in fact extraordinary. Estragon and Vladimir, for instance, entertain themselves (and their audience) at one moment by exchanging hats in a complex routine which leaves Vladimir significantly in possession of Lucky’s, the source of the slave’s eloquence. The hats themselves are a direct tribute to the masters of silent-film comedy—Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton—and their talkie successors—Laurel and Hardy. All of this—music-hall patter, circus-clowning, and movie costume—is taken, even down to the round song and the lullaby from the most popular and elementary forms of entertainment. This is the comedy which resides in a work unjustly thought of as gloomy and boring. How can a play like this be dull, if Estragon’s priceless howler (in asking a question answered pages earlier) is delivered as it should be, with an exact sense of timing? Or if Pozzo’s words and actions are exploited by an actor with the requisite presence and physique? Far from weakening the play, a director who brings out its comic elements accurately enables the play’s serious meditation on the vanity of human wishes to be made all the more effectively and forcefully.

What, do you think, is the symbolic significance of the Pozzo-Lucky relationship?

Various Interpretations of Pozzo and Lucky as Symbols

Various interpretations of the Pozzo-Lucky relationship and its significance have been offered by critics. According to one interpretation, these two men represent a master and a slave. According to other interpretations, Pozzo and Lucky symbolise the relationship between capital and labour, or between wealth and the artist. Another view, which seems to be very far-fetched, is that this relationship has an autobiographical origin, Pozzo representing James Joyce and Lucky representing Samuel Beckett.

(It is a well-known fact that, in the initial stages of his literary career, Beckett was deeply attached to James Joyce and was almost like a disciple to him.) One of the critics tells us that Pozzo is no other than Godot himself. According to this view, Godot is God, Pozzo is Godot, Pozzo is therefore God; and since Pozzo is nothing but a tyrant and a slave-driver, so too is God. Another critic characterises Pozzo as the God of the Old Testament, the tyrant-divinity in Act I and the New Testament God, injured, helpless, crucified, in Act II. On the other extreme from this view is the opinion that Pozzo is a kind of anti-Godot. It has even been said that Lucky may be Godot. Yet another view is that Lucky suggests the Biblical figure of Christ.

One Way of Getting Through Life with Someone Else

Thus we have almost as many interpretations as there are critics. One of the critics says that, while Pozzo and Lucky may be body and intellect, master and slave, capitalist and proletarian, coloniser and colonised, Cain and Abel, sadist and masochist, Joyce and Beckett, they represent essentially, and more simply, one way of getting through life with someone else, just as Vladimir and Estragon more sympathetically represent another way of doing so.

A Metaphor of Society

It is possible to treat Pozzo and Lucky as representatives of the ordinary world from which the two tramps are excluded. Pozzo and Lucky create a metaphor of society, not as it is but as the tramps might see it, with the social structure reduced to an essential distinction between master and slave. Pozzo appears all-powerful, dominating the stage by his gestures and his inflated language. By virtue of his capacity to enjoy sensual delights and his wealth, he reminds us of a feudal lord, self-consciously magnanimous in his disposal of time and charity. His is a well-regulated world in contrast to the confusion of the tramps where everything is in flux. It was Lucky who gave Pozzo what refinement and culture Pozzo now possesses. But for Lucky, all Pozzo’s thoughts, and all his feelings would have been of common things. “Beauty, grace, truth of the first water”—these were originally all beyond Pozzo. But Lucky is now a puppet who obeys Pozzo’s commands. He dances, sings, recites, and thinks for Pozzo, and his personal life has been reduced to basic animal reflexes: he cries and he kicks. But once he was a better dancer and capable of giving his master moments of great illumination and joy; he was kind, helpful, entertaining, Pozzo’s good angel. But now he is “killing” Pozzo, or so Pozzo believes. Lucky’s thinking is now not the rationalist consolation which once it was, but a total scepticism which illuminates the agony beneath appearances. When he speaks he is Pozzo’s tormentor; he reminds Pozzo of the reality which it is Pozzo’s earnest endeavour to avoid. This becomes clear in Lucky’s great speech which terrifies the hearers because it foretells the extinction of the world. The change which overtakes Pozzo and Lucky in Act II may be treated as a comment on the decline of the master-slave society.

Pozzo, the Egotist and Absolute Monarch

There is another way of approaching this curious pair of characters. Perhaps, in the portrayal of Pozzo, Beckett has given us a caricature of God, the absolute monarch. Pozzo is the living symbol of the Establishment. He is an egotist, full of self-love. He is fond of hearing his own voice and the ready flow of his rhetoric. The stool which Lucky carries for him is a kind of portable throne for the monarch. Pozzo’s greatest concern is his dignity. He rebukes the tramps for asking him a question: “A moment ago you were calling me sir, in fear and trembling. Now you’re asking me questions. No good will come of this!” Pozzo’s absolute mastery, his divinely delegated powers, must remain unchallenged. As to his slave, Pozzo would like to get rid of him, but “the truth is you can’t drive such creatures away. The best thing would be to kill them.” One recognises here the tone of a super-lord. In Act II, reduced to a pitiable condition, Pozzo still calls his servant “pig” and encourages Estragon “to give him a taste of his boot, in the face and the privates as far as possible.” Although he himself cries for pity, Pozzo feels no pity for anyone else. Paradoxically this grotesque man formulates the tragedy of man’s brief existence on this earth: “One day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die......They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.” In Act I, Pozzo becomes furious on hearing Lucky’s offensive rhetoric. He tramples on Lucky’s hat and shouts triumphantly: “There’s an end to his thinking!” Tyranny is here firmly established. In Act II the master is blind, and the slave dumb. The rope which links the two is shorter, symbolism the increasing dependence of the master on the servant. Clearly Pozzo has not carried out his original intention of selling his slave. The two wretched creatures are still joined together, the result being a monstrous indivisible mass of humanity.

The Material and Spiritual Sides of Man; Contrasted Pairs

It has often been said that Pozzo and Lucky are one man. According to this view, they represent the duality of body and mind; they represent the relationship between the material and spiritual sides of man, with the intellect subordinate to the appetites of the body. Estragon and Vladimir have likewise been supposed to represent one man. If these assumptions are correct, the difference between the two pairs may be noted. The oneness of Pozzo and Lucky is degrading to both and is shown as harmful; the connection of the other two is a warm, life-sustaining relationship. In fact, mere contact with Pozzo has a weakening effect on others. This shows the demoralising consequences of tyrannical rule. Pozzo and Lucky belong to a formal world and have an orthodox social relationship: dominating and being dominated. They are tied to each other not by their natures but by their external conditions. The slave is tied but the master is also tied because he must hold the rope. In Act II, this is the rope leading the blind. Vladimir and Estragon have a different relationship: informal and outside society; wanting to break away yet still anxiously returning to each other; a voluntary relationship but with binding natural ties. Thus there is a major contrast between the Pozzo-Lucky and the Estragon-Vladimir relationship. Pozzo and Lucky are complementary individuals, as are the other two; but the relationship between the first two men is on a more primitive level: Pozzo is the sadist master, Lucky the submissive slave.

The Mutual Inter-dependence of Pozzo and Lucky

Although Pozzo and Lucky present an obvious and sharp contrast to each other, they have one thing in common: they are both driven by a desperate attempt to evade panic which would grip them if they lost their belief in what Pozzo stands for. Pozzo lives by brief orders which he flings at Lucky. No other will than his own exists. Lucky, in a way, deserves his name because he has a master who organises his life for him, cruelly though he may do so. It becomes more and more evident in the course of the play that Lucky believes that his safety lies only within the pattern of a mutual sado­masochistic relationship between himself and Pozzo. (In Act I, Pozzo reveals this mutual torture in one of his speeches) For this mutual fixation Lucky has sacrificed everything, even his soul and his creativeness. And he accepts his present abject misery and slavery as a matter which concerns nobody but Pozzo and himself. When Estragon tries to wipe away Lucky’s tears after Lucky has received a cruel reproach from Pozzo, Lucky kicks Estragon in the leg. It would seem that the relationship of master to slave is of the unbreakable kind. The tyrant strives to make the victim totally dependent on him, whereas the victim sees the basis of his own security in the authority of the tyrant. The following opinion is also noteworthy: “The pozzo-Lucky pair may be compared to the collective pseudo-ego. The two tramps, on the other hand, reveal features of the lost value hidden in those who have something above the average, an overplus for which there is no adequate outlet.”

Mankind Versus Christ

There is also the view that Pozzo represents mankind, and Lucky represents Christ. If this view is accepted, what takes place before the tramps is the re-acting of the Redemption. The tramps, of course, do not recognise it as such, find it unpleasant, and prefer to continue waiting for the mysterious Godot. Another possible interpretation, already indicated above, is that Pozzo and Lucky represent human life, Pozzo representing the physical aspect of the human personality and Lucky the spiritual, which is in time brutalised by the treatment it receives and is reduced to the incoherence represented by Lucky’s monologue. Pozzo himself in the course of the play turns blind, this perhaps being an indication of the transience of human power and domination.

Post-Colonial Literature in English

Postcolonial literature refers to writing from regions of the world that were once colonies of European powers. The term refers to a very broad swath of writing in many languages, but the emphasis in this class (in an English department) is on writing in English. The writers in this course come from quite different backgrounds, including Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean, but they struggle with some similar issues, chief among them being the legacy of colonialism – of European dominance.

Postcolonial literature is of particular importance partly because much of it is stylistically original and different from earlier European literature, (one thinks of the number of postcolonial writers who have received prestigious literary prizes in recent years). But postcolonial writing is also important because the texts – as literature – have the potential provide perspectives on the world that are unavailable from textbooks and the newsmedia. The best postcolonial literature aims to tell good, entertaining stories while seriously attempting to represent some of the most troubling conflicts and injustices imaginable.

Postcolonial writers attempt to develop their own literary voices in regions of the world that may have been described in the colonial era as “primitive” or “savage” – where literature and culture were considered absent or somehow illegitimate. The larger project of moving past this colonial legacy, what we might call the “decolonization” of writing, brings up a wide array of themes, each of which we will address in turn. To begin with, there are issues that affect writing itself, such as choice of language. Many postcolonial writers choose to write in the languages of the former colonial power (i.e., English, French, Spanish, Portuguese), though this can be a source of serious disagreement. Moreover, much postcolonial writing is highly sensitive to how language is used, and by whom. There is a serious consideration of the role of dialects, patois – the intentional, potentially liberatory use of what one African writer calls “rotten English.” 

Relatedly, postcolonial writers are compelled to find suitable and original shapes in which to represent their particular cultural experiences and historical perspectives. The novel-form is a European construct – is it malleable enough to tell the story of villagers in Zimbabwe, Punjab, or Trinidad? One answer to this problem, a mode of writing known as magical realism, blends traditional storytelling practices (some of which may be oral) with western modes of narration. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is one of the best examples of the deployment of the magical realist style. We will discuss each of these issues of form as we progress; we will also refer to some critical and theoretical texts that map out these and other formal concerns.

In this course literature, politics, and social theory will be inextricable for the simple reason that the texts themselves are intensely concerned with social and political problems. The postcolonial experience has been extremely violent and complex, with new forms of oppression and violence often replacing the old structures. The past 50 odd years have seen innumerable conflicts around the definition of the nation in the postcolonial world. Other conflicts have circulated around issues such as ethnicity, race, religion, and cultural difference. And nearly everywhere are negotiations of gender and sexuality, which are in the foreground in virtually everything we will read. Responding to these problems requires a good deal of particular historical and cultural knowledge relevant to given issues or struggles, and I will encourage members of the class to pursue and develop knowledge related to given texts (for example, Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days might provoke research on the history of Pakistan).

Finally, we will talk quite often about diasporization and displacement. Because they often express ideas that are controversial in their home countries, many postcolonial writers find themselves in exile, sometimes in the capitals of the former Imperial regime (a surprising number of the writers in this course currently live in London). Others are members of immigrant populations who have moved from postcolonial locales to European and American metropolitan centers, in search of economic opportunity. Yet others (especially Caribbean writers like Naipaul and Phillips) are descendents of people who were displaced against their will – slaves and indentured laborers. As a result of all of these factors, displacement and exile are central themes in postcolonial writing.