he continues to use phrases such as "who can doubt it" juxtaposed with "for reasons unknown but time will tell," suggesting the incomprehensibility and futility of faith. His speech makes any sort of god appear to be a villain who plunges humans into fire and torment for no particular reason.

Some of the language in his speech also mocks academic and philosophical thought. His use of the word qua (meaning "by way of") over and over again suggests the pomposity and overuse of it in an academic sense, and he stutters when he refers to research in the "acacacacademy." It is worth noting that caca also refers to poop, a way to tear down the pristine image of the academy.

Lucky further refers to different researchers and thinkers throughout his speech, citing others, but he begins to refer to so many others that it becomes unclear what ideas should be attributed to whom. Similar to his use of the word caca, two of the scholars he cites are Fartov and Belcher, which suggests a lot of hot air or flatulence—again as a way to make fun of scholarship and philosophy.

In the end, Lucky may symbolize a lack of faith in both God and reason. He may, in fact, be "lucky" in the capacity that he never has to think for himself, instead following orders from Pozzo and otherwise standing mute. When he is commanded to think, he becomes frantic and confused.

In the (almost) seventy years since Waiting for Godot debuted, scholars studying Samuel Beckett have expended a lot of energy trying to decipher what’s going on in Lucky’s infamous outburst. Everyone seems to have a theory: that the monologue is just gibberish; that it’s an elaborately coded puzzle which will yield great insights to the person who’s able to decipher it; that it’s full of allusions and wordplay which echo themes from within the play itself; that it’s a vicious parody of academia and self-described experts. It’s probably most accurate to say that all of those theories are more or less true. Lucky’s speech doesn’t make a lot of sense (at least on the surface), but neither is it completely void of significance.

It helps to know several things about Samuel Beckett. One, for most of Beckett’s career, he attempted to keep his writing style completely unadorned and as minimal as he could reasonably get it. Two, he was painfully precise; some actors who worked with him told stories of Beckett agonizing over the number of dots he’d use in his scripts to indicate a pause in the actor’s delivery. And three, early on, Beckett worked as James Joyce’s secretary. If you’ve ever read even a little bit of Joyce, especially Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake, you can see some of his style in Lucky’s speech. Knowing those things gives us a clue about the significance of what Lucky shouts out: the excess of empty words and phrases functions as a parody or satire, nothing Beckett put on the page is accidental, and what is in those lines sometimes reveals itself in an associative, allusive way.

Look at the first few lines:

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment ...

On first glance, it seems like a stream of gibberish, and it’s meant to be that way. But part of what makes it nonsensical are the empty phrases which speech-givers and academic writers might use to sound weightier and more intelligent. We might start to see some meaning if we remove a few of those empty strings of words from the text. In the first phrase, since existence and of a personal God seem to logically go together, we can remove all the empty bits—as uttered forth, in the public works, of Puncher and Wattmann. We can get an idea that they’re empty if they aren’t essential, if they don’t add any crucial information to the declarative sentence they’re cluttering up. We’re left with: “Given the existence of a personal God outside time without extension who loves us dearly with some exceptions and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who are plunged in torment ...”

If you understand that philosophers of religion talk about God as existing outside of time and without extension (i.e., doesn’t take up any space), and that Miranda is a reference to an incredibly empathic character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, then the phrase is clear and straightforward. All those word strings like for reasons unknown, time will tell, and as uttered forth start to sound faintly funny, and tying Miranda into things not only adds some illustration of what God is like, but brings in Shakespeare to show that Beckett is wrestling with timeless issues.

Part of the fun of “editing” Beckett here is deciding what does or doesn’t matter. You’ll have to decide whether words like apathia (lacking emotion), athambia (being unflappable), and aphasia (an inability to speak or communicate) are crucial, add interesting nuance to the ideas of God that Beckett is referencing, or do little more than litter the speech. These are questions to address throughout all of Lucky’s speech. You’ll also have to decide whether Beckett is alluding to anything at all when he drops names into the flow of words. (Here’s a hint: Miranda and Berkeley are both references to actual entities; Fartov and Belcher aren’t, and it probably won’t take long to figure out what jokes Beckett is making with those made-up names.)

Demonstrating the disintegration of the human condition, Lucky's speech is a summary of the two main characters' life journies and, therefore, the life-journey of all humanity.  Once the reader gets past the seemingly random collection of words in Lucky's speech, it is important to note a few different things commented upon.  First, Lucky comments upon God in all of His "divine apathia" who Lucky feels is no longer present. This commentary about God leads nicely into Lucky's next subject which is the human condition.  Humanity, according to Lucky, "wastes and pines wastes and pines."  Finally, Lucky speaks of the earth which, he says, is "much more grave" leading the reader to believe that Lucky is speaking about eventual death.  Also, throughout the speech, Lucky also does his own fair share of mocking everything from higher learning to the most grotesque of bodily functions.  These interludes are, of course, dispersed throughout the speech.  In a nutshell, I believe that Lucky isn't spouting nonsense words.  No.  Lucky is revealing our path through life to death with a few laughs along the way.

Lucky is a secondary character in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. Lucky only speaks once. He begins his speech speaking about "the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard." His entire speech is long and incoherent. Not much of the speech makes sense at all. After the speech, Pozzo, Didi (Vladimir), and Gogo (Estragon) do not even discuss Lucky's speech. It seems to have confused them to the point that it does not seem worth discussing.

Essentially, Lucky's speech plays to the idea that the play itself is an example of absurdism. His speech is, literally, absurd. That said, one could argue that elements of the speech do relate to God in some way.

Existence...personal God.

This part of the speech acknowledges that the relationship between one and God is a personal one. Here, Lucky is stating that the relationship between one and God cannot be defined on a universal level. Therefore, Lucky's speech cannot be understood by Didi and Gogo, because they are dependent upon one another, and a personal relationship with God is impossible.

Those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire.

Here, Lucky seems to contemplate the idea of hell. Sin tends to be personal. Humankind tends to sin on a personal level, and these sins ("reasons unknown" by others) are what send them into the "fire." It seems that Lucky is speaking on the idea of living an honorable and sin-free life. By living this way, one should be able to ensure he or she is not "plunged in fire."

Heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing.

Here, Lucky seems to be making a statement on the idea that, if nothing else, believing in God will allow one to live in a calm world. The "blue still and calm" of heaven (and God) is important enough to focus upon in life.

At the close of his speech, Lucky falls down. He seems to have become exhausted by the revelations he has made because the speech has taken everything out of him. Lucky, figuratively, leaves the question of God up to the reader to determine, and when one tries to take all of the unnecessary diction out of the speech, Lucky seems to understand God more than readers may first acknowledge.

Lucky's speech, when reduced to only the points that make sense, states that one must have a personal relationship with God. God, who exists "outside time without extension who from the heights of divine" (outside of time and space), loves us dearly." God "suffers like" man when he (man) is "plunged in fire." Unfortunately, the man has "labors left unfinished." When examining the limited speech, one can see that Lucky openly discusses God.

Linguistically speaking, this was a "two-sentence" rambling monologue of over 700 words. Lucky is the quietest character in the play, and after obtaining the hat, he opens up supposedly because that was the only way he would think.

The importance of the meaning is that it expresses some deep philosophical (and daring) thoughts that range from lust and sex, to life, and then deepens greatly to defining life as an existential occurrence, (which denotes the absurdism in the monologue), and moves on to the reality of God.

For a play with no plot, that monologue alone carried enough weight to anchor it and to create meaning.

In Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot, Lucky is a character that generally has little to say, as compared to most of the other character who make up for Lucky's lack of conversation. At one point, the tramps ask that Lucky be made to think: he needs his hat to do so.

Lucky's monologue, however, is one very, very long sentence. It doesn't really make any sense, and it is described logorrhoea:

The spoken form of logorrhoea...is a kind of verbosity which uses superfluous (or fancy) words to disguise an otherwise useless message as useful or intellectual.

Because it is generally just rambling, it does not have a conclusion or end. When his hat is removed, he stops "thinking." There are a few items that can be picked out as having some validity, such as the whimsical nature of God (ruling arbitrarily), without following laws or delivery sound judgment, but acting in a capricious nature. He also refers to man's inaction—seeming to present him as a victim, who worries extensively after something and then just "fades away." Lucky refers also to the "decaying state of the earth." This is, as one might expect from Pozzo, a pessimistic statement that looks to the end of the world, a hopeless standpoint.

(It is noted that this monlogue might be based on the phiolosophy of Bishop Berkeley.)

These ideas are surrounded by words that support the hopeless mood of the play: apathia (apathy), aphasia (muteness), suffers, torment, flames, endures, the end, hell, error, elimination, etc.

The purpose of Lucky in the play has been discussed and disputed for some time. However, it seems to me, in light of the foolishness he utters in his monologue, that he represents someone who need not make choices: they are made for him. He does not need to think about what he does, as he is (again) told what to do and not what to think.

Pozzo tells him what to do, he does it, and is therefore lucky because his actions are determined absolutely.

On the surface, Lucky's speech seems like nonsense, and, on one level, it is. It parodies academic language and shows how such specialized language and the citing of "experts" can obscure reality. On this level, Lucky spends a good deal of time nattering on incomprehensibly while saying very little.

On a deeper level, however, what Lucky says has a core meaning. First, he repeats the words "for reasons unknown" over and over, suggesting that audience members should pay attention to this utterance. Lucky is communicating that on some fundamental level, the ways of the "personal" God he talks about are unknowable.

Further, the human response to God, which, to Lucky, is to leave God's work on earth "unfinished," is also unknowable. Lucky, in one long, almost breathless sentence then makes a case that the creation of a physical earth, the creation of existence, is "better than nothing." The "calm" of the blue earth, so "still" even with its "cold," is something. We have materiality to cling to. This is why Lucky goes on so long about sports. They may seem ridiculous and tangential to the important academic questions at hand about life and meaning, but they are nevertheless representative of the plane in which life itself takes place. We can not say anything definitive about God, Lucky asserts, but we can live and move and be in the physical world, even if God has abandoned us or we him. Although dressed in parodic academese, this is a pragmatic statement about reality.