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 theatre" (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, inhumanly 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 landowners 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
labour, and – at least as far as commodities are concerned, market-based. Marxism and his theory of capitalism
are 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 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 the depiction of Master-Slave relationships between Pozzo and Lucky shed light on class
relations between the exploiting and exploited classes and nations in the 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 instantly 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 an appearance, it's
found that Pozzo drives Lucky by means of a rope tied around his neck. the primary impression of the two
characters shown walking around the stage is not any but an owner walking his pet. Lucky is carrying a variety
of things owned by his master around his neck. Pozzo holds a whip in his hand to regulate Luckily; this only
signifies how mistreated Lucky is and any act of his that would be considered as ill-behaviour 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
labour people are for 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 a 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