Symbolic significance of Pozzo-Lucky in Waiting for Godot

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 find a autobiographical Origin: Pozzo representing James Joyce and Lucky as Samuel Backett. Another critic characterises 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.