Pozzo

Pozzo is a character from Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot". His name is Italian for "well" (as in "oil well").

On the surface he is a pompous, sometimes foppish, aristocrat (he claims to live in a manor, own many slaves and a Steinway piano), cruelly using and exploiting those around him (specifically his slave, Lucky and, to a lesser extent, Estragon). He wears similar clothes to Vladimir and Estragon (i.e. a bowler and suit), but they are not in the dire condition theirs are. He sometimes wears a heavy "greatcoat" that is usually carried by Lucky. His props include a whip, a pipe, a breath freshener , and a pocket watch. Beckett indicates in the stage directions that he is completely bald, although this direction is rarely taken in most productions of the play (see first image).

"Godot"'s antagonist

While by no means a villain in a conventional sense of the word, Pozzo is sometimes considered (nominally) the "antagonist" of "Waiting for Godot". Although he is not technically in opposition to the so-called heroes of the play (Vladimir and Estragon) he does bring chaos into their sheltered world. Upon his first entrance, he immediately goes about attempting to exert authority on the hapless "Didi" and "Gogo" by shouting at them, ordering them about, and generally making a nuisance of himself. Along the way he mercilessly abuses Lucky (physically and mentally) into performing menial and sometimes pointless tasks. However, despite his authoritative presence, he has the tendency of falling to pieces at the (literal) drop of a hat. At certain points in the first act (and for most of the second act; see below) he has minor nervous breakdowns when things don't go his way (e.g. when he misplaces things, when Vladimir and Estragon don't understand him/berate him, etc.). Pozzo should not be seen, however, as merely a mindless, weak oppressor. He has a developed intellectual side: he philosophises intelligently, even optimistically, and recites some of the most poetic and poignant lines in the play (see quotations).

On his blindness

Pozzo goes through a rather radical transformation between the first and second act: he goes blind. When he makes his second (final) entrance, he almost immediately falls over and cannot get up. He remains this way for the rest of his scene, helplessly moaning and bemoaning his fate and condition. This change supposedly only occurs in the past day. Some critics interpret this as representing his failure to see the suffering in others, and thus has suffering upon himself.

Pozzo and Estragon

Pozzo is often compared to Estragon (just as Lucky is compared to Vladimir) as being the impulsive, right-brained part of his character duo. The idea is that Pozzo and Lucky are simply an extreme form of the relationship between Vladimir and Estragon (the hapless impulsive, and the intellect who protects him), and thus extreme forms of those very characters.

He, like Estragon, has an awful memory, and since he cannot rely on Lucky for memory (as Estragon can on Vladimir), he is even more in the dark (e.g. he cannot even remember one day before). Vladimir claims that he and Estragon know him, but this is naturally not corroborated by Estragon, and the nature of their former relationship remains unknown (within the play: see next section). He occasionally comes up with poetic metaphors for the current situation, again, just as Estragon does.

Who is Pozzo?

Many major critics, dramatists (particullarly Vivian Mercier), and the play itself, have come forward with the interpretation that Pozzo is in fact the titular character of the play: Godot. Because he has such a poor grasp on reality and memory, Pozzo cannot remember ever having met Vladimir and Estragon before (which Vladimir says they have), and thus fails to recognize them as the people he was going to see. Vladimir and Estragon have simply forgotten who he really is and mixed up his name: "Godot" is sometimes pronounced "GOD-oh" (as opposed to "guh-DOH") and as such almost rhymes with "Pozzo", making the confusion all the easier to make. However, there are several variations on the pronunciation of Godot. They are also waiting on Pozzo's "land", and if Pozzo were Godot he would want them to meet him on "his" land. This theory perhaps corroborates the interpretation of the play that holds that the tramps are in wait of a kind of "false God" who is in fact a simpleton himself.

Naturally, this interpretation is not without its detractors. The main difficulty with this concept is that the boy (who arrives at the end of each act) does not know either Pozzo or Lucky. If Pozzo were Godot, his servant would recognize him, or at least come to remind him of what he was supposed to be doing (the boy watches the scene between Pozzo and the tramps at a distance and would have had every opportunity to do so). The counter argument from the Pozzo/Godot side is, however, that the boy is simply too frightened to correct his master. When Vladimir prods the boy about it, the boy admits that Godot beats his brother. If this is truly the case, then the boy could be avoiding Pozzo's wrath. It has even been suggested that Lucky is the boy's brother. Naturally, none of these arguments and counter arguments over Pozzo's true nature can ever be corroborated, as Beckett took any secrets he had of "Waiting for Godot" to his grave.

Quotations

From Act I:
"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh."

From Act II:
"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."

Related links

*Estragon
*Vladimir
*Lucky
*"Waiting for Godot"
*Antagonist

External links

* [http://www.samuel-beckett.net/Penelope/Pozzo_Lucky.html A source of various interpretations of Pozzo and Lucky]