The Puzzo-Lucky pair plays a very significant role in
portraying Beckett's world-view in Waiting for Godot. The dominant
theme of this play is waiting, boredom, ignorance, and impotence. The
Pozzo-Lucky relationship does not seem to have any basic or integral connection
with this dominant theme. In fact, the connection between the two pairs of
characters is not very close or intimate. Even if the Pozzo-Lucky episodes were
removed from the play, the play would still stand and be
satisfactory representation of the ordeal of waiting for someone who does not
turn up or for something which does not materialize.
There are many interpretations of Pozzo and Lucky and their
symbolic significance. 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 artist. A group of critics found
autobiographical Origin: Pozzo representing James Joyce and Lucky
as Samuel Backett. Another critic characterizes Pozzo as the God of the
Old Testament, the tyrant in Act-1 and the New Testament God, helpless,
crucified in Act-II.
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, sadist and masochist, Joyce and Beckett. But they essentially represent
a way of getting through life just
as Vladimir and Estragon represent another way of doing so.
Pozzo and Lucky create a metaphor society. Pozzo appears as
all-powerful, dominating personality by virtue of his wealth. He reminds us of
a feudal lord. It is Lucky who gives Pozzo's ideas into real shapes.
But for Lucky and 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 Lucky 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.
In the play Waiting for Godot, we first see Lucky driven by Pozzo by
means of a rope tied round his neck. All of Lucky's actions seem unpredictable,
in Act-I, when Estragon attempts to help him. Lucky becomes violent
and kicks him. Lucky seems to be more animal than human, and his very sentence
in the drama is a parody of human sentence. In Act-II, when he arrives
completely dumb, it is only a tilting extension of his condition in Act-I. Now
he makes no attempt to utter any sound at all. Lucky represents the
man, reduced to lead the blind, not by intellect, but by blind instinct.
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 power. Pozzo is the living symbol of the Establishment. He is
an egotist, full of self-love. 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 question. No good
will come of this!" Here Pozzo's absolute mastery, his divinely
delegated powers, must remain unchallenged.
Pozzo and Lucky represent the antithesis of each other. Yet they
are strongly and irrevocably tied together- both physically and metaphysically.
Any number of polarities could be used to apply to them. If Pozzo is the
master, then Lucky is the slave. If Pozzo is the circus ring master, then Lucky
is the trained or performing animal; if Pozzo is the sadist. Lucky is the
masochist. Or Pozzo can be seen as the Ego and Lucky as the Id. Samuel
Beckett, with his hope to represent human beings and super ego, has drawn the
Pozzo-Lucky pair that has a great symbolic significance in the play.
