Gibberish
Gibberish
Jennifer Harrison
When one reads Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, one will assume that Lucky’s speech is full of Gibberish and gobbledygook. According to the Oxford University Press Dictionary ‘gibberish’ means the following: unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing; nonsense. Origin: early 16th century: perhaps from gibber (but recorded earlier) + the suffix -ish (denoting a language as in Spanish, Swedish, etc.). But after a proper and detailed study of the speech one must conclude there is more to Lucky’s speech than meets the eye.
The style and structure of Lucky’s speech differ from the rest of the play. The length of Lucky’s speech is extremely long compared to the other lines in the play. It nearly takes up three pages while the other lines in the play are incredibly simplistic. The beginning of the speech is remarkable, Lucky starts of as philosopher or scientist leading a debate but quickly he submerges in what seem exceptionally bizarre thoughts. What might be even more curious is the structure of the speech. The whole speech consists of one sentence and it seems to be missing syntactic structure in certain parts of it.
Samuel Beckett presents theological thoughts on the world through Lucky’s speech. Lucky’s monologue starts with the hypothesis ‘Given the existence… of a personal God’ which implies Lucky does not believe in a God. If one is to carry on reading one will come to the conclusion that Lucky does believe in a white bearded God who, from the heights of devine apathia, divine athambia, divine aphasia loves nearly all of us dearly. But Lucky is questioning his God seeing as he thinks God is unfeeling, unseeing and inattentive and therefore discusses its existence.
These thoughts are reflected in the name Godot. In French the suffix –ot is usually used at the end of names to turn these into nicknames. Putting –ot behind the name God could possibly mean ‘God the Joker’ or ‘Little God’. Another provocative
Jennifer Harrison
When one reads Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, one will assume that Lucky’s speech is full of Gibberish and gobbledygook. According to the Oxford University Press Dictionary ‘gibberish’ means the following: unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing; nonsense. Origin: early 16th century: perhaps from gibber (but recorded earlier) + the suffix -ish (denoting a language as in Spanish, Swedish, etc.). But after a proper and detailed study of the speech one must conclude there is more to Lucky’s speech than meets the eye.
The style and structure of Lucky’s speech differ from the rest of the play. The length of Lucky’s speech is extremely long compared to the other lines in the play. It nearly takes up three pages while the other lines in the play are incredibly simplistic. The beginning of the speech is remarkable, Lucky starts of as philosopher or scientist leading a debate but quickly he submerges in what seem exceptionally bizarre thoughts. What might be even more curious is the structure of the speech. The whole speech consists of one sentence and it seems to be missing syntactic structure in certain parts of it.
Samuel Beckett presents theological thoughts on the world through Lucky’s speech. Lucky’s monologue starts with the hypothesis ‘Given the existence… of a personal God’ which implies Lucky does not believe in a God. If one is to carry on reading one will come to the conclusion that Lucky does believe in a white bearded God who, from the heights of devine apathia, divine athambia, divine aphasia loves nearly all of us dearly. But Lucky is questioning his God seeing as he thinks God is unfeeling, unseeing and inattentive and therefore discusses its existence.
These thoughts are reflected in the name Godot. In French the suffix –ot is usually used at the end of names to turn these into nicknames. Putting –ot behind the name God could possibly mean ‘God the Joker’ or ‘Little God’. Another provocative