The Mistreatment Of Lucky By Pozzo

Initially becoming one of the most dominantly driven characters in the entire piece, Pozzo is a character that exerts fear and pain in the other characters, specifically Lucky. Pozzo exhibits a domineering aura that gives off feelings of superiority, narcissism, and arrogance. While this is evident, such intense feelings manifested through Pozzo’s speech and action serve to compensate for underlying internal conflict with existence and self perception. Creating a false perception of self and the world around him, Pozzo presents a more dominantly driven character in order to compensate for a life of little fulfillment coupled with his ironic mistreatment of Lucky, despite the fact that in the end their lives will amount to the same utter nothingness.

Throughout Act 1, much of the speech stated by Pozzo can be condensed down into abuse towards Lucky. Physically, Pozzo created visible marks that encapsulate this abuse, while verbally he says incredibly detrimental words to Lucky. Displaying this idea of verbal abuse perfectly, Pozzo mainly refers to Lucky through an animalistic characterization, saying things like “In reality he carries like a pig” (23), and explicitly calling him “Hog” (30) to his face. Unknowingly employing verbal irony in his statements, it is very ironic that Pozzo is referring to Lucky, a very compliant and civilized individual, as the animal-like one, when in reality it is him that deters closer and closer down the path of evil through animal-like action. Pozzo utilizes such intense and hurtful language to separate himself from Lucky. He wants to believe that he holds a sense of superiority over Lucky, when in reality they are just the same. Bringing the idea of the fate, or outcomes of the characters into the conversation, it is evident that in reality, the two characters, despite the fact that Pozzo believes that he is better than everyone else, specifically Lucky, have the same outcome in the end: utter meaninglessness. Furthering the idea of Pozzo’s wrongly-thought superiority over Lucky, it becomes clear that Pozzo chooses to recognizes the lives of others, just not Lucky’s. Upon introduction to Estragon and Vladimir, Pozzo attempting to make the duo more uncomfortable by stating that they in fact come from the same “God” as he does. Specifically, Pozzo shows his identification by stating “You are human beings none the less” (15). Unfairly, Pozzo deems that Lucky is less of a human being than every other character introduced in the text. In an attempt to pretend that they are not fated in the same way, Pozzo