On Lucky’s Speech By Greg Tigani

Lucky's speech is like a runaway parable; his verbal "tirade" almost conceals all meaning. Upon close
examination, however, it furthers the idea of the dwindling value of the Christian faith:

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal
God quaquaquaqua with a white beard. . .who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia
divine aphasia loves us dearly. . . (p. 28b)

Lucky talks in complexity, mimicking scientific style. He states givens and cites texts, but his speech
lacks the coherence and organization of a science. The quaquaquaqua loosely translates into series of
stuttered "which's" and shows a roughness far from the "beauty" and "grace" he apparently once showed
Pozzo. (22b). Underneath this scientific incoherence, though, Lucky states the subject of his discourse:
Christ, the "personal God." The opposition of the scientific tone and the topic of faith hints at the constant
struggle for one to find its place within the other. In this speech, faith and science actually detract from
each other, diminishing both of their values. This duel between ideas and language will come up again in
the future exploration of Bishop Berkeley, a scientific theologian.
As Christians believe, Christ was God as well as a human (jn the persona of Jesus Christ), with all of
humanity's accompanying strengths and weaknesses. He was literally God as a person ("personal God"),
and he lived among heights of humanity's shortcomings, which Lucky paraphrases in three cryptic "A"
words. "Apathia" is a lack of caring; "aphasia" is an inability to speak; and "athambia's" meaning is
unknown to me, but I would point out its proximity to atheism, or the belief in no God. Christ was
introduced into the "A's" of a spiritually empty world, which lacked interest, expression, and belief in God.
With his simple, yet powerful words and his miracles, Christ had the tools and the opportunity to fill man's
hollow existence. Yet the emptiness is still present—it is even the stimulus for Lucky to mention the three
"A's" in his present discourse. Christ failed to fulfill his purpose.
Lucky continues his tirade in the same manner, speaking of the polemic places in Christ's teachings,
heaven and hell:
...that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm so calm with a calm which even
though is intermittent is better than nothing... (p. 28b)
Lucky's stilted rhetoric generally restates what Christ preached, but it also shows how Christ's teachings
can be confusing and contradictory. One way to interpret the punctuation-less passage is to separate "blast
hell" from "to heaven" and treat them as two separate commands. The command then becomes an
instruction to turn away from the temptations of hell and look toward the peace of heaven. This is, of
course, the central theme of many of Christ's teachings. Why then would Lucky express it in such a way
that allows one to read the phrases together? Connected, the passage tells us to "blast hell to heaven," or
place sin and temptation together in the middle of heaven. This would not only disrupt heaven's peace, but
also flatten the entire structure and hierarchy of Christianity, placing God and the Devil, Good and Evil, on
a level plane. Furthermore, why would Lucky point out the weaknesses of the faith, that heaven's calm is
"intermittent" and merely "better than nothing?" Because the creation of a faith immediately creates the
shortcomings of the faith as a corollary. Christ's words, as retold by Lucky, establish the spatial hierarchy
of the Christian faith and simultaneously flatten that same space, as well as the same faith.
Lucky is not finished; he persists, exploring a similar idea:

. . .that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation wastes
and pines wastes and pines and concurrently simultaneously. . . (p.29a)

The body's excretory system parallels Christianity. The act of eating necessitates the removal of what
was eaten; likewise, the act of believing necessitates the questioning and ultimate removal of the same
belief. Constant eating yields constant defecation, with no net satiation. Similarly, ingesting the faith
removes the same faith immediately after the body processes it and finds only enough value to sustain,
never to satisfy. And sustenance is not enough. Just as the value of $100 today will be worth much less in
just ten years, as man progresses though time with no net improvement, his value actually decreases, or
"wastes." And man pines for more. Christianity, therefore, has only a limited sustaining effect in the short-
term (just as food touches man's lips), and as a long-term, advancing faith, it is a waste. It flows out of
man's bowels the very next moment.
Lucky then begins to explore how the faith is reduced, placing his argument in the context of his
pseudo-scientific talk: "no matter what matter the facts are there" (p. 29a). The dual "matters" allude to
Bishop Berkeley, whose name appeared in the book five lines above this quote (p. 29a). Berkeley was an
Irish Bishop who attempted in his writings to reconcile science and the Christian doctrine. He said that
matter exists if it is perceived by some mind, and that matter, therefore, exists because God is always
thinking of everything. In effect Berkeley was able to harmonize God and science. Science exists because
God thinks about it; thinking about science constitutes God. Now the Bishop is dead, literally and
metaphorically. Lucky's tirade makes a weak attempt to revive the Bishop's ideas by putting the language
of science and faith together. But instead of harmonizing, they clash. In the context of this dissonance, in a
desperate attempt to save faith in the face of questioning, the quote is a command just to accept the
evidences of faith even if science disagrees— "no matter what matter." Faith now disregards science, and
because of this, it is in a much weaker position to defend questions without scientific support to back it up.
Christianity's strength has been reduced.
Lucky also shows the devaluation of the Christian faith with the constant oblique references to
"Cunard." Sir Samuel Cunard founded the line of Cunard steamships in the mid- nineteenth century. His
ships played a pivotal role in the Crimean War (1853-1856), which was caused by a dispute between
Russia, France, and Turkey over Holy Places in Jerusalem. This reference is particularly apt because in
early 1948, the year Beckett wrote this play, Israel became a nation containing many of the same Holy
Places. The very next day the Arabs, composed partially of Christians, attacked the Israelis and stormed
East Jerusalem and the Holy Places. Men, at the very time Beckett conceived Godot, were murdering each
other to possess the city where one religion of peace and sharing began. Christianity, in part, made the city
of Jerusalem special, and that act, in turn, destroys what is most special: life.
Lucky finally brings to a close his discourse with an encyclopedia of unheeded evidence of Christianity:

. . .in spite of the tennis on on the the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas
alas on on the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labors abandoned
left unfinished. . . (p. 29b)

This portion of the text points in many directions toward one underlying purpose. Some creative
research seems in order. Tennis was originally named jeu de paume, which translates "a game of the
palm." This could allude to Christ's stigmata, which he showed to Thomas as evidence of his identity and
resurrection. The flames allude to the Pentecostal flames that descended upon the apostles as tongues of
fire, filling them with the Holy Spirit and allowing them to speak in foreign tongues so as to communicate
the word of God to foreigners.
The tears, I think, refer to Mary Magdalene's tears upon finding Jesus' tomb empty. She then saw a man
who asked her why she was weeping, to which she replied because Jesus' body had been removed from the
tomb. That man then revealed himself to be Jesus, and Mary became the first witness of Jesus' resurrection
and ascension. Likewise, the stone refers to the giant stone which was sealed over the opening of Jesus'
tomb. According to Matthew, an angel appeared to the tomb's guards, moved the stone as if it were a
pebble, and made the guards believers. Lastly, the skull refers to Golgotha, or Skull Place, where Jesus was
crucified. At this place, according to the New Testament, the earth shook as God eclipsed the sun at the
moment Jesus died, fulfilling Christ's own prophecy of the events of his death. The passage lists evidence
of evidence, but its fragmentation and sheer eclecticism work to undermine the value of the evidence, and
by extension, devalue the faith.
Still, each allusion is an allusion to evidence, which makes the final words of the quote even more
significant: "labors abandoned left unfinished." Despite all of the witnesses and miracles, words and
actions, the Christian faith is abandoned and left unfinished. The Christian campaign, even with Christ's
revelations, can't outshadow its empirical shortcomings and truly mollify man. Thus it fails.
The tirade finally ends when Pozzo, Estragon, and Vladimir triumphantly tackle Lucky, like the mob
which turns upon Jesus, silencing him, shouting "Crucify him! Crucify him!" Lucky serves Pozzo well,
insisting on carrying his burden. But his burden is an empty symbol: bags filled with sand. In the same
way, Christ, by his example, taught humanity to shoulder burden, but, according to Waiting for Godot, the
burden is not worth carrying. Christ was both the beginning and the end of Christianity, just as Lucky
began his service with high intentions, but ends as a slave who speaks only gibberish, on his way to the
auction block. In the end, they both destroy what they hoped to create.