POZZO
(He looks at the stool.) I'd very much like to sit down, but I don't quite know how to go about it.
ESTRAGON
Could I be of any help?
[…]
If you asked me to sit down.
ESTRAGON
Would that be a help?
POZZO
I fancy so.
ESTRAGON
Here we go. Be seated, Sir, I beg of you.
POZZO
No no, I wouldn't think of it! (Pause. Aside.) Ask me again.
ESTRAGON
Come come, take a seat I beseech you, you'll get pneumonia.
POZZO
You really think so?
ESTRAGON
Why it's absolutely certain.
POZZO
No doubt you are right. (He sits down.) Done it again! (Pause.) Thank you, dear fellow. (1.519-531)
Pozzo, too, requires others to help him act. Again we see that choice does not enable action in this play.
POZZO
I am blind.
Silence.
ESTRAGON
Perhaps he can see into the future. (2.655-6)
Estragon imposes his own sense of backward logic: if the man is denied one manner of sight, perhaps he has gained another. This is also a mythological reference to any one of the many blind prophets in history (think Tiresias from Greek Mythology, since we’re certain you read Shmoop’s Odyssey).
Quote 3
POZZO
(Lyrically) The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. (He laughs.) Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. (Pause.) Let us not speak well of it either. (Pause.) Let us not speak of it at all. (Pause. Judiciously.) It is true the population has increased. (1.461)
The cast of Waiting for Godot finds that the more they speak, the less certain they become. What starts off as assurance and fact quickly degenerates into guesswork and even more questions.