H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e3 6allusion is intentional, then it may be that the line is handed to
Estragon rather than Vladimir to make it appear less obvious. It is
possible, then, that a piece of drama that is generally considered to
spurn history and politics in order to portray a timeless human
condition actually opens with a discreet allusion to one of the
most momentous of all modern political events, the Bolshevik
Revolution.
This would not, in fact, be all that astonishing, since Beckett
himself was by no means a non- political figure. He fought bravely
for the French Resistance during the Second World War, and was
later honoured for his courage by the French government. At one
point he escaped by the skin of his teeth from being captured by
the Gestapo, along with his equally intrepid wife. One aspect of his
work that is not quite universal is his humour, which in its bathos,
poker- faced pedantry, mordant wit, dark satirical edge and surreal
flights of fantasy has a distinctively Irish quality to it. When the
Dublin- born Beckett was asked by a Parisian journalist whether he
was English, he replied, ‘On the contrary.’
Another piece of fiction to which Irishness is relevant is Flann
O’Brien’s great novel The Third Policeman. It opens with these
chilling words:
Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing
his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my
friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked
old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a
special bicycle- pump which he manufactured himself out of a
hollow iron bar. Divney was a strong civil man but he was lazy
and idle- minded. He was personally responsible for the whole
idea in the first place. It was he who told me to bring my spade.