Master or Servant, Acquaintance or Stranger: An Interpretation of the Binary Characters in Waiting for Godot ()
1. Introduction
Irish playwright Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), widely regarded as one of the leading figures in the theater of the absurd, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Samuel Beckett's plays, notably Waiting for Godot, epitomize the rich ambiguities and layered allusions that have made his work a subject of endless scholarly debate and theatrical exploration.
The concept of binary characters in literature, often depicted through pairs embodying oppositional traits, has been extensively explored across various genres and eras. Scholars like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes have emphasized how binary oppositions structure narratives, creating thematic depth and conflict. Prior studies, such as those by Martin Esslin and Jonathan Culler, have analyzed how these binaries enhance the absurdist themes, underscoring the human quest for meaning amid uncertainty. In Waiting for Godot (1953), Beckett’s characters, Vladimir and Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky, reflect this tradition, embodying existential dichotomies and complementing each other’s traits. In addition to these two pairs of apparent binary characters, there is another indefinite pair of binary characters in this play. If we see the two protagonists, namely the practitioners of the act “waiting” in the title of the play Waiting for Godot, as a whole, then the waited one, namely Godot, constitutes their antithesis, thus making them together a pair of binary characters.
Beckett’s innovation of drama, that is, the initiation of theater of the absurd, is closely related to the historical period in which he lived. Therefore, it is favorable to take a glimpse of the social and cultural background of the historical period in which he lived and his works were created. The time before and when Beckett produced Waiting for Godot, that is, the first half of the 20th century which was a time when human civilization was ruthlessly strangled. It was a time when traditional philosophies were upended by the rise of existentialism and modernism, challenging long-standing views on human purpose and reality. Religious faith was profoundly shaken by the unprecedented devastation of two world wars, fostering widespread skepticism and leading many to grapple with the seeming absence of divine order. Moreover, this era was scarred by catastrophic wars that not only redrew political boundaries but also left indelible marks on the collective consciousness, evidenced by the horrors of trench warfare, the Holocaust, and the atomic bombings.
With consideration of the aforesaid vast backdrop combined with the binary characters in Waiting for Godot, this thesis contends that the play is a modern allegory in which desire conquers reason, which is embodied in the binary characters of Pozzo and Lucky, and faith in God is lost, which is embodied in the binary characters of Gogo and Didi, and Godot.
2. Master or Servant
In the fourth part of The Republic Plato puts forward that there are two types of principles in human’s soul, that is, the rational principle and the irrational or appetitive principle of the soul. With the former, a man reasons, understands and knows the truth, which can be called as reason principle; with the latter, he “hungers and thirsts and feels the flutterings of any other desire” [1], which is closely connected with satisfaction and pleasure and thus can be called as desire principle. Despite the fact that Plato later proposes the third one, passion or spirit principle, he admits that it is akin to the desire principle. Plato believes that reason, which is the golden principle, ought always to rule human’s soul just like the wise philosophers who should be the ideal rulers in a state, since desire is “the largest part of the soul and by nature most insatiable of gain” [1]. And reason should always keep guard against desire lest it waxes greater and stronger with the fulness of bodily pleasures so that it is no longer confined to its own sphere, and will attempt to enslave and rule those who are not its natural-born subjects, and over-turn the whole life of man [1].
However, the reason-desire relationship is reversed in Waiting for Godot, embodied by the binary characters, Pozzo (as the master) and Lucky (as the servant). Martin Esslin once pointed that “Pozzo and Lucky represent the relationship between body and mind, the material and the spiritual sides of man, with the intellect subordinate to the appetites of the body” [2]. Despite the fact that Esslin doesn’t specify what Pozzo and Lucky symbolize, nonetheless, following his point of view, we can find that Pozzo serves as the symbol of desire while Lucky represents reason. Their relationship, that is, Pozzo becomes Lucky’s master and Lucky serves him as a servant, symbolizes that desire attains dominance over reason in modern Western world.
First of all, Pozzo fully exhibits his embodiment as desire in the play. He first “opens the basket, takes out a piece of chicken and a bottle of wine” and then “drinks from the bottle, puts it down and begins to eat.” Pozzo “eats his chicken voraciously, throwing away the bones after having sucked them” [3]. Finally, after finishing his picnic, he “strikes a match and begins to light his pipe” [3]. All we see is that Pozzo drinks, eats and smokes to satisfy his desires. Most importantly, Pozzo cannot think, which means he is devoid of reason thus reinforcing his embodiment as desire. Even though Pozzo sometimes makes one or two philosophical sentences, such as the remark of constant quantity of tears and laugh, (“the tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh” [3]), he is, in fact, no more than parroting what Lucky has taught him—it turns out that all these beautiful things come from Lucky. Lucky here symbolizes reason, mastering the knowledge of beauty, grace and truth. Due to Lucky’s instruction, Pozzo is able to scrape slight thoughts and feelings. But he soon is carried away to “professional worries”. Pozzo is not only devoid of reason, he also detests reason. When Lucky performs thinking, Pozzo becomes growingly unbearable: he is at first dejected and disgusted, and then as his sufferings increase, he gets more and more agitated and groans.
Secondly, Pozzo (desire) as the master and Lucky (reason) as the servant reverses the ideal state that reason should rule over desire. From the first appearance of the two characters, we can catch the first glimpse of such an alluding indication. When Pozzo and Lucky first come on the stage, the former imposes a long rope upon the latter’s neck in order to control its movement (“Pozzo drives Lucky by means of a rope passed round his neck” [3]), which not only serves as the symbol that desire and reason are tied together in human’s soul, but also satirizes that desire has fettered reason’s freedom and completely reigned over it. The rope here is the key trope which leaves a strong implication that desire has so potent puissance over reason that it can never break free. In addition to the rope Pozzo also uses a whip to keep a tight rein on Lucky. Wielding a whip to make terrifying sounds, Pozzo behaves just like a tyrant so as to dictate any kinds of orders to Lucky, such as the one that Lucky should perform dancing and thinking. Every time Pozzo pulls the rope or cracks his whip, Lucky has to wait for his demands. Lucky who is capable of thinking and reasoning has completely degenerated into a passive servant. Being alternately called as “pig”, “hog” and “scum” by Pozzo, Lucky never fights, or in other words, he has lost the awareness and ability to fight. Lucky, fettered by the rope, suffers from a running sore on his neck, but never groans a bit. And Lucky is feeble and senile, symbolizing the reason in man’s soul is falling. When Lucky finishes performing dancing, Pozzo names the dance “the Net”, for “he thinks he’s entangled in a net. [3]” Gogo and Didi name it “the Scapegoat’s Agony” and “the Hard Stool.” These names are pretty fitting for Lucky’s state, implying reason inside human’s soul has now reduced to desire’s subject in modern times.
Finally, Lucky who can think and reason in contrast to Pozzo, is the least lucky one but named lucky. This can be viewed as the subtle satire on the status of reason in modern Westerners—reason has lost its due respect and leadership in guiding man’s actions, replaced by unsatiable desire. This subtle satire becomes an apparent irony when Lucky walks ahead and leads Pozzo, which conforms to the belief that reason rules over desire; however, in actuality, their status is misplaced, or reversed. On the first glimpse, Lucky is the leader but actually he has forfeited his leadership and becomes the usher, leading his master Pozzo. In the play, Lucky is said by Pozzo to be his mentor. From Pozzo’s narration we get to know that Lucky used to be bright and energetic previously (“He used to dance the farandole, the fling, the brawl, the jig, the fandango, and even the hornpipe. He capered. For joy. Now that’s the best he can do [3]).” But at present he, being senile, has been severely influenced and stifled by Pozzo’s torture so that his thinking-performance seems to be mechanical, inane and disorderly. At the end of his thinking performance, Pozzo along with Gogo and Didi throws himself on Lucky so that Lucky has to struggle and shout his “text”. This scene reinforces the implication that reason is almost stifled to death. After “having sucked all the good out of [Lucky],” Pozzo prepares to “chuck him away like a banana skin [3]” and claims to sell him like a commodity in the market, which parallels the vanity fair in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress where people can sell their glory, happiness and soul. Hence Lucky is the symbolic embodiment of reason and Pozzo is the symbolic embodiment of desire, and their master-servant relationship is a modern parody in which desire reigns over reason, mirroring modern Westerner’s reason is severely undermined by their desire in the 20th century.
3. Acquaintance or Stranger
While the master-servant relationship of Pozzo and Lucky symbolizes the reign of desire over reason in modern Westerners, the relationship between Gogo and Didi, and Godot, can be viewed as the metaphor that Westerners lose their faith in God. First of all, it should be made clear that Godot is identified with God despite Beckett’s claim of having no idea regarding Godot’s identity: “If I knew, I would have said so in the play” [2]. Although Beckett refused to tell who Godot is or what this character means, we can still infer his God-identity from the play. Gogo believes he and Didi are tied to Godot (meaning their destiny is controlled by Godot), which echoes with Pozzo’s remark that he refers Godot as the one “who has [their] future in his hands… at least [their] immediate future” [3]. And Godot’s white-beard image told by his messenger the little boy accords with the image of God who has the white beard in Lucky’s tirade.
Once we understand that Godot identifies with God, it is possible for us to see Gogo and Didi, as the embodiment of modern everyman in the Western world, who loses the faith in God, since “Didi/Gogo are in a binary relationship with Godot incapable of dissociation because they are referential one to another” [4]. Faced with Pozzo’s inquiry that who Godot is since they mistake him for Godot, Gogo and Didi answer dubiously, which is full of implications:
“VLADIMIR: Oh, he’s a… he’s a kind of acquaintance
ESTRAGON: Nothing of the kind, we hardly know him.
VLADIMIR: True… we don’t know him very well… but all the same…
ESTRAGON: Personally, I wouldn’t even know him if I saw him.” [3]
They first claim Godot is an acquaintance and then deny they know him which exactly accounts for why they twice mistake Pozzo for Godot. Stranger instead of acquaintance—this relationship between Gogo Didi and Godot thus symbolizes modern Western people lose their faith in God hence their alienation from God.
On the one hand, the metaphor for the loss of faith of modern Western people can also be seen in Gogo and Didi’s loss of their sense of sin. About fifty years ago Gogo and Didi worked in a grape garden in the Macon country, for a man whose name was already forgotten by them. “There’s a big difference” between the grape garden in the Macon country and the bleak place where they now stay. The fruitful grape garden can be associated with the Garden of Eden, and the master the two protagonists once worked for may refer to God. Now they have left the garden and forgotten why they left there as well as the name of the master, implying human lose their sense of sin. As Didi says, “Thinking is not the worst… what is terrible is to have thought” [3], it is after Adam and Eve eat the forbidden apples of the Tree of Knowledge that humankind has real thought which causes serious consequences—the origin of human sin. Since Christianity holds sin is the foundation of faith, loss the sense of sin soon exacerbates loss of faith, which can be further illustrated by Gogo and Didi’s sporadic attempts to commit suicide by hanging themselves on the tree. Christianity believes “suicide is the sin against the Holy Ghost, the very greatest of sins” [5], since “every Christian is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls…” [6]. Gogo and Didi’s suicidal attempt on the tree reflects their loss of the sense of sin and more importantly, it is merely their idle trifling entertainment to “pass the time.” As for the tree on which the two protagonists attempt to commit suicide, it bears multiple symbolic importance. It “relates to the Tree of Knowledge, whose forbidden apple brought death into the world and intellectual disobedience” [5]. And at the same time it has “metaphoric relationship with the tree of the crucifixion, the cross of Christ” [5]. That is to say, the tree brings death to human and Jesus Christ dies in the tree of the crucifixion, atoning for human’s sins and bringing salvation for mankind. However, Gogo and Didi’s attempt to hang themselves on the tree is no more than a clumsy parody of Christ’s crucifixion merely for fun, totally violating its religious sacredness, which mirrors the loss of faith and reverence of religion in modern Western world.
On the other hand, the metaphor for loss of faith of modern Westerners can also be evidenced in Gogo and Didi’s subverted reading of the Bible. The two protagonists deal with the Bible merely as something fictitious or entertaining. They regard the Scriptures as pure literature and disregard its religious meanings. For example, answering Didi’s question whether he read the Bible, Gogo simply responds: “I must have taken a look at it… I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That’s where we’ll go, I used to say, that’s where we’ll go for our honeymoon. We’ll swim. We’ll be happy” [3]. Gogo not only scarcely reads the Bible but also treats it carelessly as some tour book here. And Didi casts his doubt on the reliability of the Bible, when he relates the story of two thieves. In his narration, two thieves were crucified along with Jesus. Of the four Evangelists on the spot only one speaks of a thief being saved by Jesus, and of the other three two don’t mention any thieves at all but the third says that both of the thieves abused Jesus because he wouldn’t save them. Thus, Didi raises his doubt to Gogo that “All four were there. And only one speaks of a thief being saved. Why believe him rather than the others?” [3] Gogo agrees with Didi’s opinion, saying, “People are bloody ignorant apes. [3]” This point is central to Beckett’s attitude to all writings, be they sacred or secular since he holds that why believe any text wholeheartedly? [7] The Bible is traditionally regarded as the record of God and his son Jesus’ words and actions and hence the immediate tool of faith for Christians. However, the play’s protagonists Gogo and Didi show no respect for it: they have subverted its religious meanings and talk about it to pass the time. In this sense, the two characters’ casual and skeptical attitude towards the Bible not only reflects Beckett’s (since “Beckett does not use Christian “mythology” just because he knows it, but, more particularly, because he is certain it is not true” [7], but also mirrors modern westerners’ loss of faith in the modern times beset by prevailing faith crisis.
4. Conclusion
Written in the early 1950s Waiting for Godot is undoubtedly tinged with its Zeitgeist. The first part of 20th century is a period of turbulence, both socially and religiously. Through the above analysis the play Waiting for Godot can be seen as a modern allegory in the 20th century that mirrors modern Westerners have lost their faith in God—God is not an acquaintance but a stranger to them, and their desire takes the place of reason as the dominant part in the soul—former master emphasized by the rationalism tradition now degenerates into servant. Despite the above critical effort that endeavors to delve into the mystery of Waiting for Godot, there are still more possibilities and angles, such as the dynamic between these binary characters, to explore the web of conundrum weaved by Beckett in this work, which surely is a hidden treasure trove.
Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest.