“All the Dead Voices”: The Polyphony of ‘Invalid’ Voices in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

This essay focuses on the dialogic aspect of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953) in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony. Countering the traditional interpretation of the play as a representation of the ‘universal’ human experience of endless waiting, the analysis calls attention to the fact that only one of the four major characters, Vladimir, is waiting for Godot, while the others aren’t. In this respect, waiting is only a ‘minor’ concern, and Vladimir’s waiting derives from his own, apparently religious, belief. The other characters do not share his piety but have their own interests and views on the world. For instance, Estragon wishes to leave and travel, while his repeated suggestions of suicide betray a fundamentally pessimist outlook. Pozzo’s speeches about chance and time express his fatalist view, and Lucky’s strict obedience to Pozzo’s commands speaks for his idolatry of his mortal but wealthy master. The four characters’ encounter on the road sparks a dialogue between the four different voices, but none of them prove to be more ‘valid’ than or gain ascendancy over the others due to the contradiction between their words and actions/circumstances. Like “all the dead voices” that Vladimir and Estragon hear from their surroundings, the characters’ multiple voices constitute a polyphony of ‘invalid’ voices. Beckett’s play cannot be reduced to the monologic vision of a hero whose fruitless waiting represents the modern dilemma of mankind. Instead, Beckett created a more realistic, dialogic world co-inhabited by people with their distinct voices, however ‘invalid’ or ‘dead’ they are.