2. Prepared by Gayatri Nimavat
Roll no. : 6
M.A semester 2 Batch : 2022-24
Paper 106: The Twentieth Century
Literature: World War II to the
. End of the Century
Email id: gayatrinimavat128@gmail.com
Enrollment no. : 4069206420220019
Submitted to Department of English,MKBU
3. Road map of the Presentation
● Introduction
- About Author
● Language in “Waiting for Godot’
● Lucky - Submissive Slave
● Analysis of Lucky’s Speech
- Part 1
- Part 2 (A,B,C)
- Part 3
● Overview of Lucky’s Speech
● Conclusion
-Work Citation
4. Introduction
-Lucky, One of the four main characters of Beckett’s ‘Waiting for
Godot’, is just such a man babbling his way to silence. His
Speech in Act 1 is a continuous run-on of unpunctuated, idiotic
words and phrases.
-Lucky’s Speech is as carefully constructed as the play itself, and
its meanings reinforce the themes of the play. The Speech not
only is absurd, it argues for absurdity.
-The Speech has three distinct parts. Part 1 and 2 are discrete
units, each with its own recognizable syntax, has many more
aphasiac interjections than the first two parts, and is richer in
poetic imagery connotative of death, decline and pathos.
5. About Author
Samuel Beckett, in full Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in April 13?, 1906
at Foxrock, County Dublin, Ireland and died in December 22, 1989 at Paris,
France. He was an author, critic, and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1969. He wrote in both French and English and is perhaps
best known for his plays, especially En attendant Godot (1952; Waiting for
Godot).
Notable Works:
“All That Fall”
“Come and Go”
“Dream of Fair to Middling Women”
“Eh Joe!”
“Endgame”
“Film”
“Happy Days”
“Krapp’s Last Tape”
6. -In Waiting for Godot, the catalysts of speech are 'Silence' and 'Pause',
the very elements which undermine the emotions to which the
characters lay claim and which prevent them occupying any decisive
area of commitment. Silence breaks the continuity of words and
conveys meaning in its totality. The silences in Beckett's plays
effectively 'bracket' the terms an audience might adopt in order to
understand them; the meaning is communicated by the intervals
between words.
-Lucky's repetitious, bombastic, pseudo-scientific speech that Beckett
congeals the disarticulation of the rational language inaugurated by
Didi's playful dealings with quotations. Here unmediated speech is used
against the mediated language representative of conventional literary,
Language in ‘Waiting for Godot’
7. Lucky - Submissive Slave
- Lucky not only carries Pozzo’s heavy
luggage, and even the whip with which
Pozzo beats him, he also dances and thinks
for him, or did so in his prime.
- Lucky taught Pozzo all higher values of life:
“beauty, grace, truth of the first water”.
- 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.
10. -The attributes of the personal God of religion, who “uttered forth” in revelation, are
here mixed with those of the God of speculative theology and philosophy, whose
“existence” must be discussed. God suffers with mankind, but simultaneously has the
classical theological attribute of impassibility or apathia, as well as two mock-attributes
deriving from twentieth-century skepticism: unsurprisability (athambia) and silence
(aphasia). The pressure is on, and Lucky’s God is in hot water.
-“Qua” is scholastic philosophical jargon: Pozzo has used the term correctly a little
earlier.
-“Quaqua” also puns on the French “caca”
-Puncher and Wattmann are, on the surface, fictitious academic scholar, and their
“public works” are their published writings in their field. At the same time, they are
motormen, their public works being their jobs: Wattmann runs an electric tram (watt
man), while Puncher punches the tickets. In keeping with the theological context of
Part 1, they are also inspired writers whose works are the Old and New Testaments.
-The fire and torment may be earthly suffering or the pains of hell. Vladimir had
already confused death and hell.
-Miranda is from The Tempest.
12. Part 2 (A)
This section is built on a self-repeating structural device similar
to that of Vladimir's "Dog Song". There are four "verses" each
with two parts: "as a result" and "it is established." Lucky wants
to go from the introductory "that" to the concluding "that". But
each time he says "it is established... that," this that, which
wants to be the concluding "that," becomes instead another
introductory "that," so that the first part of his argument the part
which is trying to get to the concluding "that"-is repeated three
times over before it breaks free of the cycle and proceeds to
"man". The quadruple repetition of "that man" forms a coda to
the four "verses," and brings in the concluding "wastes and
pines".
13. Each section of the refrain ends with a parenthetical
doubting or denial of what has just been "established." (The
third verse is an exception, though the word "doubt" does
appear.) This coupling of contradictions has already been
noticed in the theology of part 1, and will recur in part 2(C).
"Fartov and Belcher" are from Blake's fragment about
Nobodaddy, "When Klopstock England defied," Other dirty
puns make use of English (wastes), French (caca, popo),
and Latin (Possy, Testew, Cunard).
Anthropometry is, literally, the measure (or, the science of
the measurement) of man-man who is "short" and "brief".
14. Part 2 (B)
-The references to time and place introduce cycles. The cycle of the
seasons, in accord with the entropy of the play, hasn't the strength to run full
course, and sticks on "winter." For the form, compare the reference to place
in part 3. The cycle of place is "Feckham, Peck- ham, Fulham, Clapham"-
stations on the circular London subway. (Puncher and Wattmann operate the
subway cars.) The bicycle, one of Beckett's favorite symbols (for time) can
perhaps be seen in this line. The London subway is laid out like a big wheel
with a little wheel inside it. Radii or spokes connect the outer rim with the
inner circle (the axle), thus forming a perfect bicycle wheel. The large rim
and the small axle also mirror the structure of Godot, with its second act or
revolution weaker than its first.
-Tennis is a game of back-and-forth, repetitious, and hence resembling
cyclical events. Didi and Gogo have already played it, with words. Golf is a
game of twice-nine holes, hence also repetitious and cyclical. Cycling
introduces Beckett's bicycle explicitly.
15. Part 2(C)
-Bishop Berkeley is mentioned for a very good reason-regardless of what
purpose Voltaire may have served in the same position in the original French
version. The point of Part 2, in accord with the broad outlines of the play, is that
man fades away. He gets smaller and smaller, "short," "brief", "naked". This is
man cut to size by Beckett's anthropometry, in pitiful contrast to the universe-
measuring man of the Renaissance. Berkeley, it so happens, devised a primitive
theory of relativity, basing it on his "new theory of vision." Small things look large
under a microscope, and large things look small at a distance; nothing, therefore
(runs the argument), has an "absolute" size.
- The phrases enclosed in parentheses in II-C, like the "doubt"-addendums in II-
A, introduce contradictions: approximation and exactness, inches and ounces,
and nakedness and stockinged feet are all impossible juxtapositions.
-Connemara is a county in Ireland where long fishermen's stockings are knitted.
It is cold-too cold to be standing around naked. Connemara may also be a pun:
Beckett, who knows Italian, greets you with ironic “zest, love and devotion”.
17. -The "objection" which Part 3 begins to unfold is "much more
grave" than the one in Part II. "Grave" sets the poetic tone for this
part, recalling the pun on "AP-PALLED" earlier in the play and
foreshadowing Pozzo's swan song.
-The struggle to get through a series of "thats'' begins again (as in
2-A), but quickly breaks down. It gives way to a similar type of
aphasiac structure, in which the normal progress from one
thought to another is derailed by the double meaning of certain
words: "more... more", "in... in'', "on ...on".
-Steinweg and Peterman" reinforce the new theme of "stone"
(Stein, stone; wérpos, stone).
-Fire the air" repeats "fire the firmament" from Part 1, and "is the
same" refers to the divine apathy and the celestial calm.
18. -Toward the end of 3 the phrases common to earlier parts
begin to be sucked into the poetic vortex of phrases proper to
3, and acquire new contextual meanings. Notice, for example,
what happens to "tennis" and "abandoned": "in spite of the
tennis, the skull"; "alas, abandoned". The entropy of the play is
illustrated in the reduction of the repetitions of "the skull" from
four to two to one. "Alas alas" is also cut in half.
-”in the year of their Lord six hundred and something” means
something quite definite to Beckett, for it recurs, altered, in
Malone Dies: "... in a place impermeable as far as possible to
wind, rain, sound, cold, great heat (as in the seventh century)
and daylight...". Beckett seems to have in mind some notable
occurrence in the seventh century, presumably a
19. Overview of Lucky's Speech
-Lucky's speech is not, merely anti-intellectual, however much it
may situate the intellect as the domain responsible for the
mind's appropriation of feelings and sensations.
-The speech starts with a hypothetical statement about the
existence of a personal God, outside time, living in divine
'apathia' (non-responsiveness), divine aphasia'
(speechlessness), and divine 'athambia' (lack of the capacity for
amazement). This personal God loves us dearly, with some
exceptions, but he does not communicate with us, cannot feel
anything for us, and finally condemns us for reasons unknown.
20. -The particular phrase 'for reasons unknown' recurs more often than
any other; it functions as an effective condensation of Lucky's
message to the audience the impossibility of reasoning when causes
are unintelligible. Beckett once said that “there is an endless verbal
germination, maturation, putrefaction, the cyclic dynamism of the
intermediate'," and Lucky's speech is based precisely upon such a
circular movement of language from its initial stage of exemplary
articulation (scientific hypothesis) to its final decay (childish gibberish).
-Human Logos might, we infer, progress towards its perfection insofar
as it were able to reflect the internal unity of a world inspired by the
absolute, but the personal God (whether absent or present) is neither
charitable, intelligent nor in the least bit interested in humanity: Logos
as progress is subverted by Logos as regress.
21. Conclusion
It brings about a sense that words have been put
together haphazardly to produce a particular structure,
and, in turn, meaning. In this way, Lucky's speech is a
reflection of the play itself in concise form as it produces
meaning from its formlessness and lack of content. Lucky
concludes his speech with the word “unfinished”. It
discusses the unfinished speech as well as the
incomplete dwindling process of humans.
22. Works Cited
Atkins, Anselm. “Lucky’s Speech in Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’: A Punctuated Sense-Line
Arrangement.” Educational Theatre Journal, vol. 19, no. 4, 1967, pp. 426–32. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/3205022. Accessed 5 Mar. 2023.
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Faber & Faber, 2006.
Esslin, Martin. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Edited by Harold Bloom, Bloom's Literary
Criticism, 2008, https://bit.ly/3YLu2Zz. Accessed 12 March 2023.
Lindsay-Hogg, Michael, director. Waiting for Godot. Dublin Tales, 2001,
https://youtu.be/YuxISg9tjHk. Accessed 11 March 2023.
Velissariou, Aspasia. “Language in ‘Waiting for Godot.’” Journal of Beckett Studies, no. 8, 1982, pp.
45–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44782289. Accessed 6 Mar. 2023.
