34 pages • 1 hour read
Samuel BeckettWaiting for Godot
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Vladimir
Vladimir is the closest character to a traditional protagonist. Compared to Estragon, he is more mature, preferring to take a rational approach to their predicament. He exhibits a keen desire to analyze and explain their circumstances, and he appears to experience time differently than the other characters. Whereas Estragon forgets events and conversations from even a short time ago, Vladimir is able to recall past experiences and remember people from previous encounters. It is Vladimir who realizes how closely events from the second act mirror those of the first. In this sense, he is the closest the audience has to a proxy on the stage, which helps to solidify his position as the ostensible protagonist.
Vladimir also exhibits a sense of morality. When Pozzo and Lucky appear, it is Vladimir who is outraged by Pozzo’s poor treatment of Lucky. He wants to confront Pozzo and address his bad behavior. Ultimately, however, this outrage comes to nothing. Vladimir’s intentions come to nothing, and he never truly helps Lucky, While Vladimir’s empathy toward Lucky makes him a sympathetic figure, his failure to act is an extension of his overall situation: In the play’s environment, meaningful action and change is impossible.
Vladimir is keen to explain what is happening to him and Estragon. While Estragon is distracted by more material issues such as food and clothing, it falls on Vladimir to explain their metaphysical circumstances. He hopes to find evidence to support his various theories, but— like his attempts to intervene on Lucky’s behalf—this comes to nothing. If anything, Vladimir ends the play in a more confused state than he began it. He still has his friendship with Estragon, a mutually beneficial bond. In the rare moments when Estragon leaves the stage, Vladimir becomes anxious and panicky. In an inexplicable and hopeless world Vladimir must cling to what he has: Estragon.
Estragon
Whereas Vladimir is more thoughtful and considered in his actions, Estragon is impulse-driven and emotional. He is less able to retain memories from the previous days (or even minutes) and struggles to determine whether it is morning or evening. There is the sense that he would not last long without Vladimir. Even minor tasks, such as removing his boots, are difficult to achieve without his friend’s help. Added to this, Estragon struggles to recognize people. While Vladimir has the nagging suspicion that he has seen people before, Estragon frequently mistakes Pozzo for Godot. He does, however, maintain a grudge against Lucky and attacks him when he has the chance.
Due to Estragon’s impulsive and forgetful personality, he frequently announces his desire to leave. He repeats this intention to the point of meaningless; he never leaves and is always reminded by Vladimir that they are waiting for Godot. Despite his desires, Estragon accepts this on face value and never questions why he must wait for Godot. The need to do so seems self-evident to him.
Though Estragon is often depicted as the more simplistic of the two, he can still hold his own in an argument with Vladimir. They bicker frequently, seemingly for entertainment. Vladimir is more verbose and eloquent, but it is Estragon who claims to have been a poet earlier in his life. In his own way, Estragon is capable of moments of profound understanding. Indeed, his fundamental desire to leave reflects this. He instinctually understands the hopelessness of the situation, but he lacks the ability to adequately express his concern. Unlike Vladimir, who insists that they remain, he senses the dread which permeates their existence. It has left Estragon with a lingering suspicion of Godot, a cynicism born out of real suffering. Each morning, on waking, Estragon complains of being beaten. Lucky attacks him, and his feet give him more pain than Vladimir. His boots ache and he is always hungry. Due to this suffering, he has come to mistrust humanity and views people as ignorant animals.
Pozzo
If Estragon and Vladimir are the protagonists of the play, then Pozzo might be the play’s most suitable antagonist. In a moral sense, at least, his behavior is the most objectionable, and his treatment of Lucky riles the other characters and compels them to speak out. However, he does not function in opposition to Estragon and Vladimir and is trapped by the same repetitious cycles as they are.
Pozzo interrupts Vladimir and Estragon’s mostly genial dynamic with his loud, boisterous arrival. He bursts into their lives (possibly not for the first time) and brings with him chaos and disorder. He eats, drinks, and smokes, indulging himself at a time when the other characters are forced to eat old carrots if anything, and he never considers sharing his possessions. Worse, he treats Lucky terribly. He not only lashes out physically at his servant, but he happily inflicts emotional and mental abuse, too.
Despite his boastful bluster, Pozzo is fragile. On the occasions when his desires are thwarted, he falls apart and struggles to cope. In the second act, when he loses his vision, he can barely even stand without support and spends most of his time calling out to anyone for help. Pozzo’s sudden blindness can be read as a punishment inflicted on him for his treatment of Lucky. Pozzo and Lucky’s entrances in the first and second acts, for example, are notable in that their positions switch: In the first, Pozzo leads Lucky, and in the second Lucky leads Pozzo. In a reversal of fortune, Pozzo must depend on the slave he was about to sell, entirely at the mercy of the man he tortured for much of the first act.
Pozzo’s departure from the stage is anti-climactic. After Vladimir and Estragon finally drag him back to his feet, he leans on Lucky and is led away. He is warned that he might fall again, and as soon as he is off stage, Pozzo can be heard hitting the ground. There is an inevitability to his collapse which seems both justified and satisfying. Though Lucky is never able to escape his enslavement, there is at least the sense that Pozzo’s circumstances are no better than anyone else’s.
Lucky
Appearing midway through the first act, Lucky has few lines but is potentially important to the ideological message of the play. As Pozzo’s slave, he in a position of extreme weakness. He is bullied, beaten, and threatened throughout the first act. Even when his lot seems to improve ever so slightly in the second act, he remains the character with the least amount of agency and the least control over his actions and future. This lends a certain amount of irony to his name. Certainly, none of the events which befall the hapless slave could be described as fortuitous or lucky.
At the same time, Lucky instigates a sense of jealousy within the other characters. In the circumstances of the play, no one is lucky, and everyone is trapped in the same unending and ungratifying cycle. While Vladimir and Estragon are mired in aimlessness and apathy, Lucky has a purpose. His instructions are clear; he knows what to do and when to do it. He is not stuck endlessly waiting for a mysterious man to appear. In some respects, he has escaped the kind of vagueness which mires the lives of Vladimir and Estragon.
Lucky’s defining moment is the speech he delivers in the first act. After being compelled into speaking by the other characters (who have been promised entertainment), Lucky launches into a philosophical spiel which quickly degrades into nonsense. Words and phrases are repeated until they become meaningless, reflecting the overarching sense that coherence is frustrated in the play’s environment. Lucky’s apparent artistry belies an belies an abstract and meaningless core.
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By Samuel Beckett
