Waiting for Godot: Tugs of all kinds excepting the good ones

"I feel the tug/ of the halter at the nape/ of her neck"

Seamus Heaney penned the opening to his poem, "Punishment," in 1975. In the poem, he explores the painful nuances of violence, justice, and yes, punishment. Most notably, though, he examines how the complicity of violence necessitates effects on both ends.

One of the most jarring images in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953), is the entrance of Pozzo and Lucky: Lucky feels the tug of the halter around his neck while Pozzo feels the tug of the halter in his hand--but both feel the tug. They are connected together by the ratted rope. Estragon (Gogo) and Vladimir (Didi) are also tied together, albeit by something a bit more abstract. Who is Godot, what does he represent, and why does he tie Gogo and Didi together so firmly?

I was lucky enough to see a production of Beckett's most famous play this past Saturday. We went out to dinner before--an Italian restaurant--and I held onto my leftovers all through the play. I stewed over my pasta and Beckett's work through Sunday.

I swear, the pasta looked better on a plate than it does in a box, and it tastes AMAZING. Like, some of the best pasta you can taste. But maybe that is what Gogo says about carrots (nah, he doesn't.) But back to Beckett's play.

It seems it comes down to being tied together by nothing. You see, even though Lucky is the slave, the one who feels the tug around his neck, he is the most . . . well, I don't want to say independent. Capable? Lucky is more in control of the situation than Pozzo is, a fact which becomes plainer during the second act of the play. Pozzo is aristocracy, old world manners, and traditional systems of power. It is these systems that we hold on to so desperately, claiming that if our social institutions collapse that so will we. But Lucky does not collapse when Pozzo does (okay, so literally he does in the second act, but he gets back up eventually)--he is the one who has to care for Pozzo who cannot make his way through the world alone.

The play breaks down all these systems to which we insist on clinging. It makes them all meaningless. And how do we apply meaning to things? Through language. So the play goes so far to deconstruct language itself. Using the method first applied by Gertrude Stein, Beckett relies on repetition to diminish meaning as the play continues. By the end, the vaudevillian act of misunderstanding has taken on greater profundity and illustrates the greater flaws in our communication: we can say things that mean nothing, we can say things we don't understand, we can say things no one understands, and we can say things that don't change a thing. What is the power of language if we cannot use it to properly articulate our misery, let alone alter our circumstances?

ESTRAGON:

(having tried in vain to work it out). I'm tired! (Pause.) Let's go.

VLADIMIR:

We can't.

ESTRAGON:

Why not?

VLADIMIR:

We're waiting for Godot.

ESTRAGON:

Ah! (Pause. Despairing.) What'll we do, what'll we do!

VLADIMIR:

There's nothing we can do.

ESTRAGON:

But I can't go on like this!

VLADIMIR:

Would you like a radish?

ESTRAGON:

Is that all there is?

VLADIMIR:

There are radishes and turnips.

ESTRAGON:

Are there no carrots?

VLADIMIR:

No. Anyway you overdo it with your carrots.

ESTRAGON:

Then give me a radish. (Vladimir fumbles in his pockets, finds nothing but turnips, finally brings out a radish and hands it to Estragon who examines it, sniffs it.) It's black!

VLADIMIR:

It's a radish.

ESTRAGON:

I only like the pink ones, you know that!

VLADIMIR:

Then you don't want it?

ESTRAGON:

I only like the pink ones!

VLADIMIR:

Then give it back to me.

Estragon gives it back.

ESTRAGON:

I'll go and get a carrot.

He does not move.

VLADIMIR:

This is becoming really insignificant.

ESTRAGON:

Not enough.

Silence.

VLADIMIR:

What about trying them.

ESTRAGON:

I've tried everything.

VLADIMIR:

No, I mean the boots.

ESTRAGON:

Would that be a good thing?

VLADIMIR:

It'd pass the time. (Estragon hesitates.) I assure you, it'd be an occupation.

ESTRAGON:

A relaxation.

VLADIMIR:

A recreation.

ESTRAGON:

A relaxation.

VLADIMIR:

Try.

ESTRAGON:

You'll help me?

VLADIMIR:

I will of course.

ESTRAGON:

We don't manage too badly, eh Didi, between the two of us?

Carrots or radishes, black or pink, radishes or boots. It all becomes "really insignificant." Yet the pairs remain together, holding on and trying to survive as a couple. They wonder if it would be better to separate, if they could be happier, but they keep returning to one another. Perhaps they realize they would be happier alone because they could forge new independent paths. They could seek for new settings, new people, and new actions or habits. But they never leave and they never separate. Again and again, each morning once more, they unite to wait for Godot.

But who is Godot? This is what we know: he has at least two boys who work for him, he has a herd of goat and a herd of sheep, he has a loft other people can sleep in, he may or may not have a white beard. Godot has resources so he is seen as the last option for salvation. The play is steeped in salvation imagery, but it questions all of it. Why was only one thief saved by Christ and not both or neither? How was Lucky or Pozzo saved? Why is one brother beaten and the other brother spared? Within the play, salvation seems at best irrational and at worst impossible. One thing is for certain, though: within the ocnfines of the play, salvation is not possible through traditional channels and institutions.

Nevertheless, the characters hold on to these old systems, whether it be through emulating traditional class structures and power dynamics, discussing biblical texts, or through systems of logic. But by waiting for these systems to provide salvation, the characters run themselves ragged in circles. At the end of the play, Didi seems to have a break through regarding the situation. He realizes that the next day will simply be a repetition of their present. They will have the same conversations and arguments and disappointments. He wryly notes, "But habit is a great deadener."

At the opening of the New York premiere, Beckett claimed, "I'm working with impotence, ignorance. I don't think impotence has been exploited in the past." Certainly sexual impotence is one kind of death or deadener. When Gogo debate hanging themselves, Didi--suffering some sort of penile dysfunction himself--replies that it would give them an erection which only encourages Gogo to find a way to do it. But whether it is a tug on the penis, a tug on the neck, or the tug in the hand, it is all revealed as insufficient. These attempts to enact violence on the self or on others to maintain control over the present serve only to reveal the futility of a future.

The old systems of power provide no hope for a future. No matter how vehemently Pozzo commands Lucky, no matter how quickly Lucky espouses random references to Western canon and philosophy, no matter how deeply Gogo longs for an erection, and no matter how long Didi insists on waiting for Godot, none of it provides any sort of future. It simply repeats the existing conditions--the habits--and passes the time into the present, simultaneously revealing how meaningless the present really is. There is no construction of new systems, new understandings, or new hope. Their impotence resigns them to their current conditions, to simply continue tugging on one another in perpetuity.

Happy Monday, y'all. Now let's eat some radishes.

#samuelbeckett #waitingforgodot #modernism #impotence #future #nofuture #language