Literature often reflects history; many authors incorporate common historical conflicts to create the main struggle in their work of fiction. The same is true for Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. According to James Martin Harding, Beckett’s play identifies the historical ‘dialectic’, which in this case means a conflict between two opposing ideas, of “lordship and [those in] bondage” (52). This dialectic can be seen in two different sets of characters: Pozzo and his servant Lucky, and Didi and Gogo who wait for Godot.
The first pair of characters who exemplify Harding’s point, Pozzo and Lucky, are the most apparent example of slave and master in Waiting for Godot. At first, Lucky is obviously the slave. He is attached with a rope to Pozzo, who is mistaken at first for Godot. Like the typical master-slave relationship, Lucky is obviously treated with disrespect. He has many sores on his body, and Pozzo essentially treats Lucky like an animal. Lucky, in turn, blindly follows Pozzo’s orders, no matter how cruelly they are issued. This brings to mind the idea of the Elizabethan ‘Great Chain of Being’, in which every animal or thing had it’s own rightful placement below those of higher importance. The chain of being is a very notable example of the historical lord and slave dialectic, as it attempts to justify a hierarchy and the inferiority of those that were placed as servants or slaves. According to Harding, this is because “the subjugated perpetuate domination in the reified pursuit of labor” (54). Essentially what Harding posits is that Lucky, the subjugated, brings about his own enslavement. This was a common belief in historical dialectics, when any race considered ‘inferior’ or different would thus be enslaved. To support this supposition Harding points out Lucky’s ‘thinking’ process:
“Whatever the hypothetical knowledge that Lucky attempts to convey when commanded to think is too specialized for anyone to comphrehend. Its ‘profundity’ fosters isolation and hostility rather than a shared enlightenment or a reciprocally unfolding self-conscience” (55).
This makes Lucky seem different, which according to Harding, encourages the lord and slave dialectic. Another example of a historical dialectic is Vladmir’s reaction to Lucky’s enslavement. He berates Pozzo for taking such terrible care of his servant, but quickly revokes his comments and feels guilty for interrupting another person’s affairs. This is a common conflict among people historically, who disagreed with slavery but refused to interfere. Yet even Didi seems to know that Lucky is below them: when Didi and Gogo examine Lucky, they have the following exchange:
“Vladimir: He’s not bad looking.
Estragon: Would you say so?
Vladimir: A trifle effeminate.
Estragon: Look at the slobber.
Vladimir: It’s inevitable” (Beckett 23).
Vladimir seems to accept that Lucky is beneath, and therefore worthy of the position of servant, even though he doesn’t agree with his treatment. When Pozzo and Lucky enter the scene for the second time, Pozzo has lost his original superior attitude, and has become very dependant because of blindness. Harding compares this to the collapse of the historical dialectic of slave and master: “This loss [. . .] suggests that the history of ‘humane ideas’, like the history of Lucky and Pozzo, follows a path of degeneration” (55). Society’s notion of what is humane and what isn’t degenerates and regenerates over time, just like the character’s and the character’s memories in the play.
The second, and more interesting, example of the lord and slave dialectic is Didi, Gogo and Godot. “The relationship Didi and Gogo have to Godot corresponds with the irresolvable subservience which the Jews [. . .] had to their law” (52). Harding uses the widely believed idea that Godot represents God, and supposes that Didi and Gogo, like many religious people, follow their God without discrimination, much like a slave follows its master. Harding “examines the structure of the Jewish version of the same dialectic represented in Didi and Gogo’s relation to Godot” (53), and connects the theme of waiting to the historical conflict. Much like followers of the Jewish religion blindly wait for a Savior, Didi and Gogo blindly wait for Godot. Even when night approaches, and Didi or Gogo propose to leave throughout the act, “they do not move” (Beckett 59). The plot centers on waiting, which “assumes a peculiar historical status throughout the play. It falls further and further into the play as the play progresses without synthesis” (Harding 52). Although “the comings and goings of Didi and Pozzo mediate the status of Gogo and Didi and their waiting” (Harding 53), the lack of movement in the play is obvious. Waiting, as it applies to the historical dialectic of God (as the master) and followers (as the slaves) also connects to the fact that the play’s plot really goes nowhere. Gogo himself says that “nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!” (Beckett 43).
But according to Harding, this intentional “avoidance of meaning, his not meaning anything, is his only home for making ‘an uncompromising reprint of a reality'” (Harding 56). Harding insists that Beckett was reflecting the nonsensical behavior of life and people in reality. When Pozzo decides to leave the first time, the three men exchange goodbyes twice, and then ‘thank you’ and a series of yeses and no’s, with Pozzo finally saying he “[doesn’t] seen to be able to depart” (Beckett 55). Estragon replies by saying “such is life” (Beckett 55), which Harding interprets as Beckett’s hint that life progresses exactly like the play: it is absurd, with worthwhile ever happening. Rather, life is filled with irrational people and occurrences. An example of such irrationality is when Estragon throws out his boots, for no apparent reason, and is questioned by Didi: he simply replies by saying “I must have thrown them away [. . .] I don’t know why” (Beckett 74). Like the historical dialectic between lordship and those in bondage, the story progresses with little rationality. Beckett’s “abstractions are only as abstract as the real relations among men” (Harding 55); this can be supported by observing the fact that enslaving someone is actually very irrational in itself. Deciding who is inferior, although it may make sense on the surface, generally has little reasoning behind it.
Waiting for Godot is certainly a complex play; but Harding’s examination of the historical dialectic of ‘those in bondage’ struggling against ‘lordship’ within the play clarifies some of the meaning behind Beckett’s characters. The historical dialectic “represented by Lucky and Pozzo and by Didi’s and Gogo’s relation to Godot” (Harding 61) ix very thoroughly described and explained by Harding in his essay, and the ties to both traditional ideas of ‘master-and-slave’ and more obscure ideas of followers worshiping God are extensively demonstrated.
Harding, James Martin. “Trying to Understand Godot”. Adorno and “A Writing of the Ruins”:
Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1997. Pages 51-64.Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press Inc., 2002.
