Beckett's Waiting for Godot: An Analysis of Lucky's Enigmatic Speech

Abstract

Beckett's Waiting for Godot can be a linguistically challenging text which provides deep insight into the psychology of human speech. That our language shapes out of the jelly of words in the Chomskian deep structure becomes the pivot of Beckett's language experimentation in the form of nonsense that we often dissolve in in the moments of intense feeling. Lucky's speech is one of the most subjective and the most poetic of the moments in the play. Besides, the speech is also reflective of the structure of the play. This essay aims at bringing out the intensity of the feeling breaking the apparently haphazard linguistic structure, and thereby showing the meaning of the ostensibly meaningless existence.