"Nothingness in Words Enclose": Identity and Absence in Three Early Novels by Samuel Beckett.

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“Nothingness in Words Enclose”: Identity and Absence in

Three Early Novels by Samuel Beckett.

Agnes Scheperkeuter 6145159

MA Thesis Literary Studies: English University of Amsterdam

Supervisor: Dr. Maria Kager June 30th 2015

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Although the Irish Samuel Beckett is most well-known for his plays, the author started out his career as a writer of primarily prose. Beckett remains one of the most celebrated authors of the twentieth century, as critics have analysed and praised his use of language, black humour and variety of philosophical themes. As such, many studies have been written concerning both Beckett’s plays as well as his novels. Most studies analysing Beckett’s prose have centred around the French trilogy of novels which starts with Molloy, followed by Malone Dies and ends with The Unnameable. However, much less has been written about the relation between Beckett’s early novels – the English Murphy and Watt and the later published French Mercier

and Camier, which is the reason why this thesis will focus on these three novels. These early

works of Beckett all include themes of absence and questions of identity, the self and search for meaning. In relation to these themes, the central question which this thesis will analyse is: how does the concept of absence play a role in constructing the identities of the titular

characters of Murphy, Watt and Mercier and Camier?

In this thesis, Beckett’s early novels will be analysed in chronological order, focusing on one novel in each chapter. As such, the different underlying themes and similarities between the novels can be analysed. Although Murphy was not the first novel Beckett had written, it was Beckett’s first novel which was published in 1938. Beckett’s very first novel,

Dream of Fair to Middling Women, was only published posthumously in 1992, three years

after Beckett’s death. After the Second World War broke out, Beckett, who lived in France for the most part of his life, joined the French resistance in 1940 but had to flee from Paris in 1942. He escaped to the French village Roussillon with his partner Suzanne. Here, in the French countryside, Beckett composed Watt, which would become his last novel in English, published after the war in 1953. After the Second World War, Beckett decided to write only in French. His first French novel was Mercier and Camier, which Beckett wrote in 1946. However, the novel remained unpublished until 1970. McDonald explains:

[…] Beckett seems to have regarded it as an apprentice work. His refusal to allow it to be published until 1970 may partly be because it still has the “externality” characteristic of some of his earlier prose works. However, treating two characters on a journey, its use of dialogue and verbal play prefigures his theatrical couplings in Waiting for Godot […] (McDonald, 15).

Mercier and Camier has themes similar to Murphy and Watt, but also shows components

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in conversation. These three early novels all revolve around their titular characters, with each their own journey and troubles to face. Murphy wishes to detach himself from the world and to be free and indifferent, Watt wishes to control his environment and gain knowledge and Mercier and Camier wish to depart on a journey together. However much the characters differ, the four men greatly resemble each other as well – each character is stuck in language, never to fully grasp reality. Additionally, the four men are trapped in linguistic, spatial and temporal circles. Linguistically, the characters often repeat the same words and sentences. Spatially, they often depart and return to the same place and finally, time is organized in a cyclical manner in the novels as well. As such, the novels have overlapping themes and concepts of circularity, absence, futility of language, loneliness, alienation and

disillusionment. These concepts all shape the universe in which Beckett’s characters reside – they are doomed to be alone, repeating the same words and cycles. In the Addenda to Watt, this paradox is epitomized in a poem:

who may tell the tale of the old man?

weigh absence in a scale? mete want with a span? the sum assess

of the world’s woes? nothingness

in words enclose? (Beckett, 205).

Beckett’s characters struggle with the all-encompassing paradox of living a life devoid of meaning. The Murphy’s, Watt’s and Mercier’s and Camier’s of the Beckettian universe continually search for meaning and truth in their lives. The chapters analysing the identities of these characters will focus solely on the protagonists of each novel, for although these three texts feature other supporting characters as well, Beckett’s novels always revolve around their titular character, which is why this thesis will analyse the identity of Murphy, Watt, Mercier and Camier. Neither one of these four characters can find meaning in their life and the Beckett anti-hero remains stuck in a circle from which there is no escape. “Nothingness” or absence acts as the double layer beneath the surface of the novels, which constructs the identities, words and actions of each character.

Although Beckett’s work has been placed within a vast range of philosophical

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work offers allusions to many different philosophies and ideologies such as absurdism, dualism and existentialism. The first chapter of this thesis will focus primarily on examining these different literary and philosophical perspectives in relation to identity. This chapter will not ascribe one ‘ism’ to the works of Beckett, but rather, analyse how these concepts are presented and negated in Beckett’s work. The first chapter will examine theories such as Cartesian and Geulincxian dualism, existentialism and Sartre’s concept of the Other, absurdism and Hegel’s dialectic and dichotomy of the master and slave. These concepts which will support the arguments in Chapter Two, Three and Four. Murphy will be analysed in Chapter 2, Watt in Chapter 3 and Mercier and Camier in Chapter 4. Ultimately, this thesis will analyse how absence shapes and informs identity in these three early novels by Samuel Beckett.

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Chapter 1: Forever in Search: On Theories of Identity

Although Beckett’s prose works have been placed within a vast range of ‘isms’ – from dualism to existentialism to absurdism – Beckett himself never fully identified with one of these perspectives. As Edith Kern explains in her chapter on Beckett: “Beckett defies any philosophical pigeonholing, for the simple reason that he neither developed a specific philosophical system of his own nor identified himself with that of another” (Kern, 167). While his novels perhaps allude to certain perspectives better than others, this chapter will not ascribe one ‘ism’ to Beckett’s fiction, as even his early work encompasses many

philosophical and intellectual layers. Rather, this chapter will explore different philosophical and literary perspectives which will help in analysing how identity is constructed in three of Beckett’s early novels; Murphy, Watt and Mercier and Camier. As such, this chapter will serve as the theoretical backbone for the discussions of Beckett’s early literature to come. 1.1 Mind and Body: Geulincx and Descartes.

One of the most well-known interpretations of Beckett’s work comes from the Cartesian philosophy of dualism. René Descartes, the seventeenth century French philosopher, analysed in his Discourse on Method and The Meditations the dualism of human nature. According to Descartes, body and mind are inherently split from one another, but also intrinsically

connected. This split between mind and body has been coined the “Cartesian split” after its original author and his dualism greatly influenced philosophical ideas of man’s existence. For Descartes, the “link” between these two separate entities is the conarium or “pineal gland”; the point where the body and the mind meet. Beckett was familiar with Descartes, and his early works seem to incorporate many Cartesian allusions. Published in 1961, Hugh Kenner’s

Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study was amongst the first to analyse the author’s work from a

predominantly Cartesian perspective, analysing, among other elements, how the bicycle in Beckett’s work can be interpreted as a Cartesian element: “The Cartesian Centaur is a man riding a bicycle […]. This being rises clear of the middle in which Descartes leaves the mind-body relationship. The intelligence guides, the mobile wonder obeys, and there is no

mysterious interpenetration of function” (Kenner, 121). Bicycles appear frequently throughout Beckett’s work, from Watt leaving the station surrounded by cyclists to Mercier and Camier carrying a bicycle together. Kenner examines the bicycle in Beckett’s work as an example of Cartesian “corporeal mechanism”, where the human body exemplifies the mechanism of the bike (Kenner, 120). However, as McDonald mentions, the analysis of Beckett’s later work from a Cartesian perspective collapses:

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Kenner argued that the mind-body split was at the heart of Beckett’s work. ‘The Cartesian Centaur’, an oft-reprinted chapter from this book, argues that the man on a bicycle, which is so prevalent in Beckett’s work, is a metaphor for this dualism, the bicycle an extension of the wholly mechanical qualities of the body. As Beckett’s work progresses, the harmony between mind and body, rider and bicycle, breaks down (McDonald, 118).

The supposed harmony between cyclist and machine, and thus, the harmony between mind and body, does not stagnate in Beckett’s progression of works, as both McDonald and Kenner seem to suggest: “It is plain why Godot does not come. The Cartesian Centaur was a

seventeenth-century dream, the fatal dream of being, knowing, and moving like a god. In the twentieth century he and his machine are gone […]” (Kenner, 132). Rather, I would argue that the harmony between mind and body is already dismantled from the onset of the very first prose works – such as Murphy. For Descartes, the mind is inherently undividable: “I here remark firstly, that there is a great difference between mind and body, in that body, by its nature, is always divisible and that mind is entirely indivisible” (Descartes, 164). However, Murphy divides his mind in three zones, where each zone specifies another state of mind: “light, half light, dark, each with its speciality” (Beckett, 67). Thus, Murphy does not allude to Descartes’ view of the mind being one whole entity. The chapters to come will analyse how the Cartesian “corporeal mechanism” is both set up and dismantled in Murphy, Watt and

Mercier and Camier.

Another philosopher of the Cartesian tradition made a great impact on the work of

Murphy. Arnold Geulincx, a Belgian philosopher, occasionalist, and a follower of Descartes,

seems to be one of the prime philosophical influences on the interpretations of the character Murphy. In 2006, Geulincx’s Ethics was translated and published including Beckett’s notes on the text, which provides evidence of Beckett’s interest in Geulincx’s work. In Murphy, Geulincx’s Latin proverb “Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil veles” is quoted in the text and his philosophy of strictly separated dualism is adopted by Murphy as well (Beckett, 107). Different from Descartes, who believed that mind and body were at least connected through the conarium, Geulincx claimed that the two were completely severed: “Geulincx argued that mind and body are wholly separate, and that they only cooperate as a result of God’s

intervention” (McDonald, 78). Geulincx used the analogy of two clocks to demonstrate God’s divine intervention in man’s actions:

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[…] one representing matter, the other spirit, both wound up and set by the master clockmaker to run perfectly synchronously. From the occasionalist point of view, there could be no connection between the mental impression of a flash, for example, and the physical reality of an explosion, other than that both took place simultaneously. Nevertheless, the occasionalists, by their

assumption that God would make the two systems of matter and spirit parallel and synchronous, reveal their attachment to the old certainties (Webb, 26). For Geulincx, the two systems of mind and body were not connected, but moved

simultaneously – and thus, were separate, but cooperated through God: “I am a mere spectator of a machine whose workings I can neither adjust nor readjust. I neither construct nor

demolish anything here: the whole thing is someone else’s affair” (Geulincx, 108). Murphy’s philosophy differs from the philosophies of Descartes and Geulincx, as for Murphy there is no divine intervention or intrinsic connection which causes mind and body to cooperate, as Chapter 2 of this thesis will discuss. For all Beckett’s characters, there is no religious entity governing the universe and they remain alone. Especially Murphy, who at first sight seems to fit in Cartesian or Geulincxian tradition considering this titular character so clearly

differentiates between mind and body, has a different philosophy concerning his mind, as Chapter 2 of this thesis will analyse.

1.2 Existentialism: Sartre and the Other.

Existentialism is a school of thought which is linked often to Beckett’s work by critics such as Kern. Beckett’s dealings with the futility of human existence and the illusion of fixed identity seems to befit Beckett’s characters. But as Rónán McDonald states in The Cambridge

Introduction to Samuel Beckett, Beckett mentioned to his biographer James Knowlson: “[…]

that he was more drawn intellectually to the deterministic notion that we are trapped by our genes, by our upbringing or by our social conditioning than to the existentialist idea of absolute freedom” (McDonald, 24). However, an existentialistic approach does lend itself for a stimulating discussion concerning identity in Beckett’s work and certain existentialistic themes can be recognizable in the author’s prose. For existentialists, man exists without any blueprint or grand divine scheme that is the reason for man’s existence, man just “is”. As such, humans are alone in their existence, but are inherently free, according to the French existentialist philosopher Sartre: “[…] my very freedom is a given characteristic of my being” (Sartre, 362). Loneliness and alienation are amongst the key features characterising Beckett’s anti-heroes; they are alone, disillusioned, isolated and forever try to break free from their

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meaningless existence, but this feat is never achieved. However, Beckett’s work is not entirely existentialistic, for in Beckett’s universe, freedom is a mere illusion. For Sartre, as Eugene Webb explains, the human is inescapably free, even doomed to be free:

Sartre described […] a person can never cease to possess individual freedom, but he tries to convince himself he is not free by deceiving himself into believing he has a fixed essence which limits his freedom, that he is a definite “thing”, what Sartre calls “en-soi” (Webb, 18).

Here, Webb mentions one of Sartre’s two definitions of being, namely the “being-in-itself”, which is fixed and the “being-for-itself” which is changeable (Sartre, 175). For Sartre, the only consciousness applicable to humans is the “being-for-itself”, as humans exist for

themselves and have the freedom to choose their own identity. Although Beckett’s characters never acknowledge themselves as definite objects or bodies, they do struggle with the notion of freedom. Murphy tries to achieve mental freedom, but his attempt provides no relief and ultimately ends in his death. Beckett’s anti-heroes never ultimately achieve progression towards a desired existentialist liberty but end up desolated and disillusioned. In Beckett’s early works, the characters are never free from the limitations of the human condition. They are doomed to repeat an endless cycle of searching for meaning.

Whereas the concept of the isolated and alienated existentialistic individual is applicable to Beckett’s early work, particularly the concept of Sartrean ‘Other’ seems

appropriate when analysing the author’s early fiction. Sartre explains the concept of the Other in relation to the self: “[…] the way in which the Other appears to me: he is the one who is other than I; therefore he is given as a non-essential object with a character of negativity” (Sartre, 236). As such, the Other has a role of negation, but for Sartre, the Other is also needed to assert one’s own existence, as Edith Kern explains: “[…] the Sartrean concept of the Other whose Look confirms the Self’s existence and at the same time threatens it and encroaches upon its freedom with objectifying judgements” (Kern, 169). Paradoxically, the Self can only be known in relation to the Other, but the Other also poses a threat of negation to the Self. Others in Murphy, Watt, Mercier and Camier offer the protagonists’ their desired existence or embody their hope of knowledge. This relationship between Others, as Kern mentioned, is based predominantly on the “Look”; the seeing of an Other, and the apprehension of being seen by an Other. This relationship based on looking is described by Sartre as “[…] the fundamental relation of the Me to the Other” (Sartre, 282). This assertion and negation of the Self through the Look of the Other will be analysed in the chapters to come, paying attention

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to the relations between Murphy and Mr. Endon and Watt and Mr. Knott. For instance, Mr. Endon, Murphy’s schizophrenic chess partner, remains impervious to Murphy’s game and seems to adhere to his own logical system without external influence – a source of envy for Murphy who eventually remarks bitterly: “Mr. Murphy is a speck in Mr. Endon’s unseen” (Beckett,150). Murphy cannot stand not being “seen” by Mr. Endon, the Other whom he envies.

Others provide significance to Beckett’s titular characters not only through their Look. They are juxtaposed to the protagonists, such as Murphy and Celia, or seem to exist solely in each other’s company, such as Mercier and Camier. But the most elusive example of the Other in Beckett’s early work is perhaps Mr. Knott, the ever-changing, fluid, unknowable entity in Watt, as Chapter 3 of this thesis will explain. Ultimately, all four characters – Murphy, Watt, Mercier, Camier – remain alone, outside of the company of the Other. Kern continues: “[…] Beckett’s work has been increasingly expressive of the fact that the individual is isolated, that his communication with Others is precariously dependent on the Look, that whatever exists comes to light through the individual […] (Kern, 171). Watt is isolated in his quest for knowledge, Murphy is isolated in his futile attempts at achieving freedom and Mercier and Camier only exist in relation to the Other. All Beckett’s characters try to communicate with various Others but never gain a full understanding of themselves nor of anyone else.

1.3 Absurdism and Beckett.

The term “Theatre of the Absurd” was originally founded by Martin Esslin, a theatre critic “to indicate a group of playwrights who give artistic articulation to the belief in absurdity

expounded by Camus, the sense that human existence is futile and without meaning” (McDonald, 24). Although Beckett renounced both absurdism and existentialism, his early works do contain absurdist elements, as this thesis will point out. The Theatre of the Absurd was too assured in its own pessimism for Beckett’s liking and he deemed the language of Sarte, Heidegger and other philosophers as too difficult to permeate. Nevertheless, existentialism, and especially the concept of the Sartrean Other do provide worthwhile interpretations of Beckett’s lonely and alienated characters, such as the complicated

relationship between Watt and Mr. Knott, which will be discussed in Chapter 3. In addition to existentialism, absurdism offers a philosophical backdrop against which certain Beckettian elements – the rejection of fixed logic, the repetitions, the strange language and scenes – can be interpreted and analysed. For instance, Mr. Knott’s endless varying appearances to Watt

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are profoundly absurd, as Webb mentions: “Knott’s continual changing of shapes signifies that nothing is intelligible because there is a basic absurdity at the heart of the universe” (Webb, 17). Watt is in a continuous search of real tangible knowledge, only to never find it – Knott provides the confusing, ever-changing element which defies all Watt’s attempts at making sense of the world around him. Thus, Watt’s universe is inexplicable and without meaning, and as such, can be interpreted as absurdist, for in the absurdist universe, there is no meaning to be found.

Concerning Mercier and Camier, Raymond Federman argues: “The hero of an absurd novel, such as Mercier et Camier, does not have a fate; he is never permitted to choose one” (Federman, 144). In Mercier and Camier, the titular characters roam about a town, forever contemplating and discussing whether to leave or not. They search for a purpose, a reason to leave, and their whole existence seems to revolve around talking to each other. Mercier and Camier are similar to Murphy, who is searching for freedom, and Watt, who is searching for truth. Ultimately, as this thesis will argue, the identities of these characters is based on the absence of their unattainable goals or purposes, and Murphy, Watt, Mercier and Camier are all doomed to repeat the same cyclical quests. This absence of meaning or purpose can be interpreted as absurdist. Andreia Irina Suciu analysed absurd identities in Beckett’s play

Waiting for Godot, but some of her observations are applicable to Beckett’s early work as

well: “The human being is left, at the end of this undertaking, hopeless, bewildered and anxious because the whole action seems without a genuine motivation and at first sight

nonsensical” (Suciu, 117). Absurdism will provide a useful perspective for analysing Murphy,

Watt and Mercier and Camier, for all these characters’ identities can be interpreted as

individuals with absurdist tendencies or rather, individuals within an absurdist Beckettian universe.

1.4 Hegel’s Dialectic.

Many critics have argued the influence of the German idealist philosopher Hegel on Beckett’s work such as Hans-Joachim Schulz, who wrote a study analysing Beckett’s work from a Hegelian perspective: This Hell of Stories: A Hegelian Approach to The Novels of Samuel

Beckett. Hegel, known for The Phenomenology of Spirit in which he developed the concept of

spirit – the German ‘Geist’ – also developed an opposition between master and slave, which has led to countless interpretations of Beckett’s Watt and Mr. Knott and the later characters from Waiting for Godot, Pozzo and Lucky. However, most helpful in analysing identity in Beckett’s early fiction is the concept of Hegel’s dialectic. This dialectic has been described as

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“thesis-antithesis-synthesis”, by critics such as Schulz, where the second negates the first and the third is the sum of the first and the second. Schulz explains:

But all its forms reflect the following basic logical process: A is not B: A’s relation to B is one of negation, opposition, difference since A is non-B, and B non-A. But at the same time, A is constitutively dependent on B, and B is defined through its relation to A. A has become the ‘meaning’ of , and vice versa. They have become ‘identical’. But they are identical only insofar as they are different […]. Neither A, then, nor B, is the ‘whole truth’, which rather lies in their relation (Schulz, 51).

This Hegelian perspective of a so-called triad or trinity can be found in many connections and relationships between characters in Beckett’s works. The antithesis and the synthesis both allude to the individual’s relationship with an Other: “Next we find the individual subject to a real antithesis, leading it to seek and find itself in another individual” (Hegel, 18). For

instance, Murphy and Celia could be interpreted as being mind and body, male and female, external and internal. As such, their relationship can be interpreted as an antithesis, or two sides of the same coin. Furthermore, Beckett’s work is fraught with contradictions and oppositions, which can be analysed through a Hegelian lens as well: “His speculative Logik centers in contradiction and difference as much as the thinking and existing of the Beckett characters does” (Schulz, 46).

Hegel’s dialectic concerning contradictions can also be related to the larger framework of absence or nothingness in which Beckett’s work resides, as the characters simultaneously seem to need company and dislike the presence of the Other as antithesis. Absence is

prevalent in the three novels – such as silence, absence of attainable goals, absence of objects and places, themes of alienation, isolation and disillusionment – and these instances of absence create the “stripped” universe of Beckett’s characters and permeates every aspect of the world in which the characters reside. Schulz explains that for Beckett’s characters: “the paradox of being and not being looms large and informs every twist and the very diction of their verbal and verbose existence” (Schulz, 53). The paradox of Hegel’s trinity, where thesis is being, antithesis is non-being and synthesis is the combination of non-being and being, informs Beckett’s prose works as well. This “all-encompassing paradox” of existence and non-existence combined could be perceived as the fundamental Beckettian question (ibid, 53). The underlying problem involving every character in every work of Beckett; the search for the meaning of man’s existence. Ultimately, the answer to this question remains ungraspable

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and the characters never find closure. Hegel’s philosophy will help analysing this Beckettian question, and ultimately, assist in interpreting the identities of the characters in Murphy, Watt and Mercier and Camier.

1.5 Conclusion.

Although Murphy, Watt and Mercier and Camier provide countless allusions to different philosophies, Beckett himself never labelled his work as pertaining specific philosophical elements. Perhaps Beckett distanced himself from different schools of thought because his earliest work was so dense in philosophical allusions, as McDonald argues: “Beckett’s later hostility to philosophy is, like the reformed smoker, probably fuelled by his own early immersion in it” (McDonald, 25). However, this thesis will use different philosophical traditions such as Cartesian and Geulincxian dualism, absurdism and existentialism, because these ‘isms’ will help in gaining an understanding of identity in Beckett’s early prose. Ultimately, the philosophies of Descartes, Geulincx, Sartre and Hegel will help in analysing how identities in Beckett’s early works are shaped, which will be discussed in the chapters to come. Descartes and Geulincx’s philosophies will help in defining the mind-body dualism in the three novels, Sarte’s existentialism and the concept of the Other will help in understanding the protagonists’ as alienated individuals with a troubling relationship to external Others and Hegel’s concepts of master-slave and paradoxical being and non-being will help in providing an understanding of how the relationships between the titular characters and the Others can be interpreted. Ultimately, these philosophies will provide theoretical support which is needed to answer central question of this thesis: how does absence play a role in constructing the

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Chapter 2: The Silent Murphy: A Philosophy of Absence.

Murphy’s opening page begins with a pessimistic remark: “The sun shone, having no

alternative, on the nothing new” (Beckett, 1). This observation sets the tone for Murphy’s tale, for even though the novel features many puns and linguistic jokes, the plot is inherently one of a distressed man who seeks, above else, psychological peace. The first sentence of the novel exemplifies the premise of the novel – there is no escape of the endless repetitive cycle. Just like the sun has no choice but to rise over and over again, Murphy is stuck in a quest for freedom which leads him nowhere. Although Murphy encompasses many comic and absurd scenes, above all, Beckett’s first published novel conveys profound questions of identity and the self. The novel’s titular character struggles with the external and internal world, never finding complete peace in either. This chapter will focus on Murphy’s construction of

identity. I will argue that Murphy is not a Cartesian or Geulinxcian character per se – as some critics such as Kenner have claimed – but rather, his usage of the mind-body dichotomy is related to his search of self. As Murphy searches for elation and freedom in his mind, his sense of self is strongly connected to this search. I will argue that Murphy’s sense of self is based on absence. Murphy tries to find a way to withdraw himself from the external world, focusing solely on his inner life. However, as this chapter will analyse, Murphy cannot remain completely indifferent to others and he is ultimately unable to detach himself from reality. Murphy’s desired indifference and inner peace prove to be unreachable aims and influence his identity. As such, Murphy’s sense of self is based on this absence of attainable goals. This chapter will explore various philosophical allusions which Murphy entails, which create a framework in which we can understand Murphy’s mind, such as Cartesian and Geulincxian dualism and Sartre’s concept of the Other. These concepts will help in analysing Murphy’s own philosophy of mind and his identity, which are both ultimately based on absence.

At the time he wrote Murphy, Beckett was no longer living in Ireland but in London. However, his Irish roots are noticeable in the novel as Dublin and Cork both feature as a backdrop, and Murphy is undoubtedly an Irish name. But like Beckett himself, Murphy moves from Ireland to London. Here, Murphy lives in a small room, with, most notably, a rocking chair. This rocking chair features as a significant item for Murphy’s favourite pastime, where he ties his naked self to this chair to rock back and forth:

He worked up the chair to its maximum rock, then relaxed. Slowly, the world died down, the big world where Quid pro quo was cried as wares and the light

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never waned the same way twice; in favour of the little, as described in section six, where he could love himself (Beckett, 4).

On a textual level, this citation features a direct reference to another section in the novel, where Murphy’s inner life is explored. Murphy distinguishes his inner life in two elements; the so-called virtual and actual mind, which will be discussed in 2.3. On a philosophical level, the text refers to the “little” in contrast with the big world, which in the case of Murphy is his mind. One of the only ways for Murphy to experience pleasure and peace is when he sits in his rocking chair, favouring the “little”. Within the novel, the rocking chair remains a significant object and a symbol for Murphy’s fruitless search for peace, as the chair rocks back and forth but never leaves its spot, so does Murphy never move forward to find his inner peace.

2.1 Mind vs. Body: Celia and Murphy.

The first chapter of Murphy is entirely comprised of Murphy sitting in his rocking chair. In this chapter, the third person narrator describes Murphy’s pleasures, his studies in Cork under a man called Neary and a telephone call from his girlfriend Celia. One of the ways in which the novel features the dualism of mind and body is not only Murphy’s employment of the dichotomy, but also the symbolism of Murphy’s relationship to Celia. She is female, a

prostitute and is firmly situated in the “big” world, the external reality which Murphy wants to detach from. She has a realistic outlook on work, which Murphy seems to lack: ““But we cannot go on without any money,” said Celia. “Providence will provide”, said Murphy” (Beckett, 13). Arguably, Celia can be interpreted as a metaphor for the body. Murphy, male, contemplative and continually favouring the “little” world, symbolizes the mind. The concept of the Sartrean Other is applicable to their relationship; as a character, Celia is needed to juxtapose Murphy’s existence but at the same time, Celia provides a threat to Murphy’s desired life as well. For one, she urges him to find work – incited by her grandfather Mr. Kelly – in the “big world” in order for them to live together: “When there was no money left and no bill to be cooked for another week, Celia said that either Murphy got to work or she left him and went back to hers” (ibid, 14). In one of their first scenes together, Murphy has asked Celia to bring him a horoscope, or as he describes the document: “My life-warrant” (ibid, 20). When the horoscope makes clear that Murphy’s lucky number is four, his lucky day Sunday and his lucky year 1936, Murphy has an excuse to delay finding work to sustain them both: “The very first fourth to fall on a Sunday in 1936 I begin” (ibid, 22). However, Celia is determined to make their arrangement work as they move to a new room: “Here they

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entered upon what Celia called the new life. Murphy was inclined to think that the new life, if it came at all, came later, and then to one of them only” (ibid, 39).

Eventually, Murphy is right when he states the new life comes to one of them only, as he does manage to find a job in a mental hospital, but only after he has left Celia. Throughout the novel, their relationship remains a troubled one, for Murphy both loves and hates Celia: “The part of him that he hated craved for Celia, the part that he loved shrivelled up at the thought of her” (Beckett, 5). The part which craves for Celia is also the part which Murphy hates: his body. Their relationship is founded on physicality, which is one of the reasons Murphy can never fully commit to his inner life. Their sexual encounters are described as music: “[…] their nights were still that: serenade, nocturne and albada” (ibid, 45). And

Murphy, although he detests his body, often returns home quickly to Celia: “he was more than usually impatient for the music to begin” (ibid, 63). Although Celia wants Murphy to face the external world, instead of leaving him be in his rocking chair, Murphy does engage in a relationship with her: “Celia loved Murphy, Murphy loved Celia, it was a striking case of love requited” (ibid, 10). Eventually, when Murphy is looking for a job, Celia takes up sitting in the rocking chair herself: “Most of the time that he was out she spent sitting in the rocking-chair with her face to the light” (ibid, 41). Notably, Celia’s face is turned to the light and the external world, which is different to Murphy, who wishes to succumb to the darkness of the third zone of his mind. As Celia sits in the chair while Murphy is looking for employment, she begins to understand him a bit better: “Thus in spite of herself she began to understand as soon as he gave up trying to explain” (ibid, 41). Eugene Webb has interpreted this scene as Celia’s enablement to let Murphy go: “As it turns out, Celia’s very love for him eventually enables her to understand Murphy’s view of life and to let him go” (Webb, 46). As Murphy leaves Celia and continues to detach himself from the external world, Celia is, ironically, left alone with her understanding of his mind because she took up sitting in his rocking chair.

Sartre stated: “The Other, on the contrary, is presented in a certain sense as the radical negation of my experience […]” (Sartre, 228). This radical negation of the Other is applicable to Celia and Murphy’s relationship – as Celia can be interpreted as an embodiment of the physical, Murphy represents the mind in which he wishes to immerse himself. As a character, Celia juxtaposes Murphy’s perspectives as an Other present in the external and physical world. Briefly mentioned in Chapter 1, Beckett’s characters all end up in a state of loneliness and disillusionment – the same goes for both Murphy and Celia. Although Murphy dies in the novel, he dies with the knowledge that he was never able to detach himself from the world completely, and thus he dies disillusioned. Celia, a figure situated in “reality” becomes

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disillusioned as well, as she ends up carrying her – arguably dying – grandfather who is all she has left: “There was no shorter way home. The yellow hair fell across her face. The yachting-cap clung like a clam to the skull. The levers were the tired heart. She closed her eyes. All out” (Beckett, 170). Webb mentions how the ending of Murphy is “extremely poignant”: “The loneliness Celia is left is not only that of a person deprived of those who were close to her; it is that of a person who has come to see clearly the emptiness and hopelessness of life in this world” (Webb, 51). As such, not only characters who detach themselves from the external world such as Murphy end up alone in Beckett’s universe, figures who are firmly situated in reality suffer the same fate.

2.2. The Unseen Indifference of Mr. Endon.

When Murphy finally begins to work after his break-up with Celia, his place of employment is an asylum called Magdalen Mental Mercyseat – or MMM. Murphy picks up this post to replace a man called Ticklepenny, who is afraid to succumb to madness if he cares for the mentally ill. Interestingly, for the first time in his life, Murphy feels content in his workplace and actually gets along with the patients: “They caused Murphy no horror. The most easily identifiable of his immediate feelings were respect and unworthiness” (Beckett, 102). These feelings of respect arise from Murphy’s envy of the patients, who seem to have achieved his desire of detachment from the external world and live in tranquillity: “[…] the impression he received was that of self-immersed indifference to the contingencies of the contingent world which he had chosen for himself as the only felicity and achieved so seldom” (ibid, 102). Here, Murphy describes his desired state of indifference which the patients seem to have – a mental state which Murphy himself was never able to fully achieve. Barnard explains:

Murphy’s mind being what it was, he naturally felt at home with the patients in the asylum, who seemed to him to have achieved what he sought, a permanent indifference to the outer world and the complete immersion in the dark zone (Barnard, 13).

Apart from his envy, Murphy also feels a connection with the patients of the asylum: “He would not have admitted that he needed a brotherhood. He did” (Beckett, 106). Thus, in MMM, Murphy finally feels content. He enjoys games of chess with the patient Mr. Endon: “Mr. Endon was a schizophrenic of the most amiable variety, at least for the purposes of such a humble and envious outsider as Murphy” (Beckett, 111). Murphy is envious of the

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world which Murphy so desperately wishes for himself.

Mr. Endon provides another significant example of an Other to Murphy, specifically in relation to the Look. Whereas Celia can be interpreted as an example of the body, Mr. Endon can be interpreted as a character exemplifying Murphy’s ideal detached mental state. The patient’s name alludes to both beginning and ending in English, the words “end/on”. Endon also means “Greek for within”, which seems to suit his character, as Mr. Endon lives in his mind and is impervious to others (Federman, 71). Mr. Endon is also aptly named because he is the last person Murphy sees before his death – his end – and he sees Murphy only as a means to an end – a person to play chess with. However, Murphy does not remain indifferent to Mr. Endon, although these feelings are not reciprocated: “Whereas the sad truth was, that while Mr. Endon for Murphy was no less than bliss, Murphy for Mr. Endon was no more than chess” (Beckett, 144). Finally, just before his death, Murphy acknowledges the fact that he can never be similar to Mr. Endon, he remains a tiny mote in the vast darkness of Mr. Endon’s sight: “Mr. Murphy is a speck in Mr. Endon’s unseen” (Beckett, 150). This excerpt can be analysed with the help of Sartre’s concept of the Look of the Other, which is needed to assess the self: ““Being-seen-by-the-Other” is the truth of “seeing-the-Other”” (Sartre, 257). But, unfortunately for Murphy, he is never “seen” or appropriately apprehended by Mr. Endon, and thus, their relationship is one-sided.

Ultimately, Murphy remains alone in his wonder of Mr. Endon – his feelings are never reciprocated by the patient and Murphy remains a tiny mote in the immense obscurity of Mr. Endon’s sight: “[…] his lips, nose and forehead almost touching Mr. Endon’s, seeing himself stigmatised in those eyes that did not see him […]” (Beckett, 149). Then, after Murphy has uttered his final remarks, he returns to his garret where a gas leak ignited by a candle puts a stop to his thoughts: “Soon his body would be quiet, soon he would be free. The gas went on in the w.c., excellent gas, superfine chaos. Soon his body was quiet” (ibid, 151). When Murphy finally acknowledges that he can never resemble the patient, he can let go of the world and as such, set himself free. Although the novel never specifies whether this passage should be read as suicide, Murphy has drawn up a will and he states to Mr. Endon just before his death: “The last Mr. Murphy saw of Mr. Endon was Mr. Murphy unseen by Mr. Endon. This was also the last Murphy saw of Murphy”, which can be assumed is Murphy referring to his planned suicide (ibid, 150). This statement, which “he hears inside himself and speaks out loud the words” are not uttered by the narrator, but by Murphy (Webb, 48). As such, Murphy refers to himself in the third person, distancing himself from both Mr. Endon – the enviable Other – and the Self, as he does not use the first person to refer to himself. As Murphy dies in

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his garret, his mind is finally free. Mr. Endon therefore provides a significant Look in the Sartrean sense – Murphy identifies himself with Mr. Endon and uses him to verify his own desired existence, but in the end, Mr. Endon remains an Other, and Murphy can never achieve such blissful indifference.

2.3 Murphy’s Triplicity of Mind.

Up to Chapter Six, Murphy is comprised of a relatively straightforward plot; Murphy and Celia’s struggles and Neary’s search for Murphy, aided by another old pupil called Wylie and the handyman Cooper. Chapter Six is a break from this linearity, the entire chapter is devoted to a description of the workings of Murphy’s mind, beginning with an explanation of

Murphy’s dualism:

He distinguished between the actual and the virtual of his mind, not as between form and the formless yearning for form, but as between that of which he had both mental and physical experience and that of which he had mental

experience only (Beckett, 65).

Here, Murphy’s dualism is explained as that which he has experienced both mentally and physically – referred to as the actual – and that which Murphy knows only mentally, referred to as the virtual. The virtual coincides with the “little”, as previously mentioned, and both terms refer to Murphy’s mind. However, Murphy does not only consider the mind-body dualism, he divides his mind into three elements as well. Within the virtual of his mind, Murphy distinguishes three zones: light, half light and dark. The first zone, which is the light zone is described as “a radiant abstract of the dog’s life, the elements of physical experience available for new arrangement” (Beckett, 67). In the light zone, Murphy can adjust and construct the external world to his own wishes: “Here, the kick that the physical Murphy received, the mental Murphy gave” (ibid, 67). The second zone, the half light zone, is the zone where “the pleasure was contemplation” (ibid, 67). The last and third zone is the dark one, where Murphy can detach himself completely from the external world and become a “mote in the dark of absolute freedom” (ibid, 68). Thus, Murphy’s dualism is extended as he not only distinguishes between his mind and body, but between three different metal states as well: the light, the half light and the dark zone of his mind.

Many critics, such as Hugh Kenner, have argued that Murphy’s portrayal of the mind-body contrast is ultimately Cartesian. As explained in Chapter 1, Descartes described the connection between mind and body as the conarium or ‘pineal gland’, which Neary mentions

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to Murphy: “I should say your conarium has shrunk to nothing” (Beckett, 4). For Descartes, the conarium could evidently not have been shrunk, for this is the point where mind and body meet. For Murphy however, the connection between mind and body is much more troubled: “Thus Murphy felt himself split in two, a body and a mind. They had intercourse apparently, otherwise he could not have known that they had anything in common” (ibid, 66).

Additionally, Murphy distinguishes different parts of his mind – the three zones from light to dark. With this distinction, Murphy moves away from Descartes, who stated: “I here remark firstly, that there is a great difference between mind and body, in that body, by its nature, is always divisible and that mind is entirely indivisible” (Descartes, 164). For Descartes, a body is made up of body parts which can be separated, whereas the mind constitutes an entirety which cannot be divided. In this respect, Murphy’s philosophy of the mind-body dualism differs from Descartes, as he also divides his mind into three parts.

Murphy’s philosophy evidently differs from Descartes’ mind-body dualism.

Nevertheless, the dualism set forth by a disciple of Descartes, the Belgian Arnold Geulincx, seems better suited to study Murphy’s philosophy. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Geulincx argued that mind and body are wholly separate. In Murphy, Geulincx’s adage is cited: “In the beautiful Belgo-Latin of Arnold Geulincx: Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil veles” (Beckett, 107). This motto can be roughly translated as: “where you are nothing, you should desire nothing”. For Geulincx, man can only be independent in his own mind and control his own thoughts.

Therefore, he should not attempt to influence anything in the external world, for such attempts are useless. Fletcher discusses the Geulincxian philosophy in Murphy and analyses the trouble with labelling Murphy’s philosophy as Geulincxian: “Such a man, if he follows Geulincx, does not act against passion, but in indifference to it. But the trouble with Murphy is that he still is subject to certain passions which he cannot subdue, notably his need for Celia” (Fletcher, 52). Indeed, Murphy is not a true follower of Geulincx, for “the part which he hates”, which is his body, craves Celia’s bodily presence. Although their shared nights are not described with fondness, Murphy is not indifferent to his nights with Celia either. Also, as he asks Celia for a horoscope, he places his trust in the “heavenly bodies”, which reveal the faith Murphy has in astrology (Beckett, 23). Additionally, Murphy feels envious of Mr. Endon for he has achieved a Geulincxian indifference – a state which can never be reached by Murphy. Thus, Murphy does not remain indifferent to Others – not to Celia and not to Mr. Endon, who both provide significant examples of what Murphy wishes to leave behind – the realm of the physical, embodied by Celia – and what Murphy wants, which is the detachment of Mr.

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Endon. In this sense, Murphy’s philosophy differs from Geulincx’s philosophy. Murphy cannot be completely indifferent and Geulincx’s ideas remain insufficient:

But it was not enough to want nothing where he was worth nothing, nor even to take the further step to renouncing all that lay outside the intellectual love in which alone he could love himself, because there alone he was lovable. It had not been enough and showed no signs of being enough (Beckett, 108).

As such, Murphy wishes to be indifferent, but never reaches this goal. At the end of his life, he actually contemplates a return to Celia: “[…] and then, if he felt any better, to dress and go, before the day staff were about, leaving Ticklepenny to face the music, MUSIC, MUSIC, back to Brewery Road, to Celia, serenade, nocturne, albada”, but in the end, Murphy dies in the asylum (Beckett, 151).

2.4 Conclusion.

Arguably, Murphy cannot be labelled as a true Cartesian or Geulincxian character – he differs from both these philosophers in his triple division of mind and his lack of indifference. As such, Murphy’s philosophy is completely his own; a dualism which distinguishes between three mental zones. He places trust in astrology, has feelings for Celia, envies Mr. Endon and is all the while searching for his preferred state of being, sitting in his rocking chair which allows him to be free in his mind:

Thus as his body set him free more and more in his mind, he took to spending less and less time in the light, spitting at the breakers of the world; and less in the half light, where the choice of bliss introduced an element of effort; and more and more and more in the dark, in the will-lessness, a mote in its absolute freedom (Beckett, 68).

Engulfed in the third dark zone of his mind, Murphy experiences pleasure and can love himself. The only time Murphy can get close to his preferred state of dark and quiet, is when he is in his rocking-chair. However, as the novel progresses, Murphy cannot fully submit to the third zone, as he does not remain indifferent to Others and the outside world; his

relationship crumbles, the stars cannot give him answers and he remains an outsider to the world of the true apathetic, embodied by Mr. Endon. Therefore, Murphy’s quest ultimately fails and his wish of detachment remains unrequited and Murphy’s fruitless search eventually ends in death. As such, absence of a true indifference, of a total immersion into the dark zone,

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shapes Murphy’s identity. Murphy contains an all-encompassing element of absence: the novel portrays the illusion of freedom. Murphy’s identity is shaped by this absence – his desires can never be fulfilled – and ironically, Celia, the embodiment of the physical and the “real” ends up alone, as a symbol for all Beckett’s ever-searching characters.

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Chapter 3: Watt and the Impossibility of Knowledge

Different from Murphy, the structure of Watt is far less comprehensible and more dense. Watt was Beckett’s last novel written in English, for after the Second World War, Beckett would only write in French. The plot of Watt contains endless lists, oppositions, enumerations and possibilities: “[…] from the one to the other is the passage from the lesser to the greater, from the lower to the higher, from the outer to the inner, from the gross to the fine, from the matter to the form” (Beckett, 38). Such accounts give the impression that Watt is ultimately an unfinished novel. But McDonald explains: “The text is merely deploying the illusion of incompletion in order to kick against what Beckett regarded as the calcified, delusory conventions of slice-of-life realism” (McDonald, 81). Indeed, Watt’s universe is one of estrangement and can hardly be called realistic. From the moment Watt enters Mr. Knott’s house where he begins to work, all his attempts of trying to make sense of the place and his employer fail. Watt’s seems unable to be sure of anything during his stay at Mr. Knott’s residence. This chapter will explore Watt’s estranging quest for knowledge, arguing that like Murphy, Watt’s sense of self is informed by absence.

3.1 Watt’s Quest.

All Beckett’s novels revolve around their titular protagonist, but for the first pages of Watt, although certain characters discuss him, Watt himself does not come into play. The first scene of Watt is one of the only realistic ones in the novel; people are chatting at a train station, which is also the setting where the novel ends. In these first scenes, a man called Mr. Nixon describes Watt to a man called Mr. Hackett. Apart from Mr. Nixon mentioning Watt is “an experienced traveller”, he only describes Watt’s appearance and nothing more about his personality or his past (Beckett, 14). Nixon has difficulty in stating how long he has known Watt, which Eugene Webb explains as follows:

It is significant that Nixon feels, even though he is much older than Watt, that there was never a time when he did not know him. The reason for this is probably that Watt represents to him a certain aspect of human nature. “All men by nature desire to know”, said Aristotle. Watt is a living embodiment of this characteristic of man. As his name suggests, Watt is a talking “What?” (Webb, 57).

Here, Webb aptly explains how Watt can be interpreted; as a symbol for man’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge, hence his name. Watt pays attention and questions almost anything in

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Mr. Knott’s house from the moment of his arrival: “Watt’s attention was extreme, in the beginning, to all that went on around him. Not a sound was made, within earshot, that he did not capture and, when necessary, interrogate […]” (Beckett, 68). This attention remains with Watt for the remainder of his stay at Mr. Knott’s house, although his assuredness seems to wane the longer he stays: “As there seemed no measure between what watt could understand, and what he could not, so there seemed none between what he deemed certain, and what he deemed doubtful” (Beckett, 107).

Although readers get a fleeting image of Watt’s appearance – a shabby-looking, middle-aged man with a big red nose – his nature and his past remain ultimately vague. The

symbolism of Watt representing the ever-searching man is strengthened by this elusiveness of history and character. Watt’s quest begins when he enters Mr. Knott’s residence, although he is unsure how he manages to get in the house, because both the back door and the front door are locked. He manages to get inside anyway, for which there are a couple of explanations, but all seem inadequate:

The result of this was that Watt never knew how he got into Mr. Knott’s house. He knew that he got in by the back door, but he was never to know, never, never to know, how the back door came to be opened. And if the back door had never opened, but remained shut, then who knows Watt had never got into Mr. Knott’s house at all, but turned away, and returned to the station, and caught the first train back to town. Unless he had got in through a window (Beckett, 29).

This rambling narrative sets the tone for Watt’s stay at Mr. Knott’s house; he is always trying to list every possibility and think of every option without ever reaching a full conclusion. Watt begins to work in Mr. Knott’s house as a servant, although he never sees Mr. Knott eating the dinner Watt has prepared for him. At first, Watt is certain of the existence of Mr. Knott but as time goes on, he begins to doubt everything: “And the reason for that was perhaps this, that little by little Watt abandoned all hope, all fear, of ever seeing Mr. Knott face to face […]” (ibid, 119). The novel is devised in four parts and an Addenda, where the first part depicts Watt’s arrival at Mr. Knott’s house and the second part deals with Watt’s strange life in his employer’s residence. On the first page of the second part, the narrator gives a clue of Knott’s existence: “Watt had no direct dealings with Mr. Knott, at this period. Not that Watt was ever to have any direct dealings with Mr. Knott, for he was not” (Beckett, 53). In this excerpt, the narrator refers to Mr. Knott as being “not”, which means he does not exist,

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he is not there. Watt’s search for knowledge is comprised of the pursuit of an answer to the question of who or what Mr. Knott is.

3.2 The Negation of the Other: Mr. Knott

As mentioned in Chapter 1, Mr. Knott is arguably the most elusive example of the Other in Beckett’s early work. He is an ever-changing, unknowable, almost Godlike entity. Watt does not know what Mr. Knott does during the day, how old he is, how his voice sounds. Watt rarely sees him – if he sees him at all. The narrator does describe exchanges between them, but these meetings often negate themselves. Mr. Knott’s intangibility is evident especially in his appearance, which changes all the time: “With regard to the so important matter of Mr. Knott’s physical appearance, Watt had unfortunately little or nothing to say. For one day Mr. Knott would be tall, fat, pale and dark, and the next thin, small flushed and fair […]”

(Beckett, 172). All Watt knows is that he is a servant in the house of a man called Mr. Knott. Although he never encounters Mr. Knott face-to-face, Watt is, time and time again, assuring himself of his employer’s existence: “This is not to say that Watt never saw Mr. Knott at this period, for he did, to be sure” (ibid, 54). But then the narrator continues: “But these rare appearances of Mr. Knott, and the strange impression they had made on Watt, will be

described please God at a greater length, at another time” (ibid, 54). Mr. Knott and Watt never come face-to-face and as such, the name of Watt’s employer alone determines his role in the novel; “Knott”, pronounced as “not”. His name affirms his role of negation and absence. Watt is repeatedly searching for some proof of who his employer is, but there is nothing to be found: “To those driven mad by the need for a meaning, Knott is the meaninglessness, the nothingness, at the heart of the universe” (Webb, 61).

Mr. Knott embodies the Other, to which Watt wants to relate. In some ways, Watt needs Knott – he needs a form of meaning in his life which he can relate to as an Other:

Watt did not know whether he was glad or sorry that he did not see Mr. Knott more often. In one sense he was sorry, in another glad. And the sense in which he was sorry was this, that he wished to see Mr. Knott face to face, and the sense in which he was glad was this, that he feared to do so (Beckett, 119). Watt both fears to see Mr. Knott just as much as he wants to see him face-to-face, because the Look of the Other is needed to apprehend one’s own existence, as Sartre explains: “In fact it is only in so far as each man is opposed to the Other that he is absolutely for himself.

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(Sartre, 236). If Watt can confront Mr. Knott and look at him – and be looked at by Mr. Knott – he can assert his sense of self. However, Watt never meets Mr. Knott face-to-face and as such, this assertion is never fulfilled. Arguably, Watt cannot know himself because he cannot know the Other embodied by Mr. Knott. As Watt concludes that he knows nothing, he feels: “So sick, so alone. And now. Sicker, aloner” (Beckett, 119). Watt ultimately is alone and disillusioned – he cannot have knowledge of anything.

3.3 Watt’s Disillusionment.

The relationship between Watt and Knott can be interpreted with Hegel’s concept of the master and slave. Certainly, their relationship is one of service, as Watt is employed by Mr. Knott. However, their relationship seems to be one-sided as Mr. Knott seems to desire

nothing, even though he employs two servants. Schulz remarks: “As Endon’s eyes in Murphy, Knott’s reflect nothing but Watt. If Knott is the master to Watt, Watt is no servant to Knott who needs nothing” (Schulz, 20). Although Watt is Mr. Knott’s servant, the actions he

performs in Mr. Knott’s residence – such as cleaning and preparing food – are never met with any reaction from Mr. Knott: “Mr. Knott was never heard to complain of his food, though he did not always eat it” (Beckett, 71). The breakfasts, lunches and dinners Watt prepares are never seen to be eaten by his employer, and finally, Watt learns that a dog actually eats Mr. Knott’s food, although he is not sure where the dog eats the meal in its entirety or just the remains. Mr. Knott’s house seems strangely cut off from reality, as Watt is never sure how much time passes nor is he sure of the events taking place in Mr. Knott’s residence: “Yes, nothing changes, in Mr. Knott’s establishment, because nothing remained, and nothing came or went, because all was a coming and a going” (Beckett, 106). Ultimately, Watt needs to know who or what Knott is, but Mr. Knott seems to desire nothing from him: “And Mr. Knott, needing nothing if not, one, not to need, and two, a witness to his needing, of himself knew nothing. And so he needed to be witnessed. Not that he might know, no, but that he might not cease” (Beckett, 166). As such, if Mr. Knott could be perceived by Watt, he would cease to exist, which can be tied to the interpretation of Mr. Knott as a Godlike entity.

Many critics, such as Schulz, have argued how Mr. Knott ultimately represents God. This interpretation works on multiple levels. Firstly, Mr. Knott never appears to his servants. They have never seen him, nor heard his voice and as such, all of the servants create a different version of their employer: “[…] Erkine’s Mr. Knott, and Arsene’s Mr. Knott, and Walter’s Mr. Knott, and Vincent’s Mr. Knott, to compare with Watt’s Mr. Knott” (ibid, 102). Second of all, the chores Watt performs for Mr. Knott do not seem to matter to his employer, as Mr.

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Knott never seems to be in the dining room nor eat his food. And although Mr. Knott seems to want nothing, the servants seem to be drawn to him anyway: “[…] there is something about Mr. Knott that draws towards him, to be about him and take care of him” (ibid, 49). Mr. Knott remains unknown and elusive and as such, can be interpreted as signifying the Divine or a metaphysical entity. Webb argues: “His only reality is as a mental fiction in the mind of the person seeking him. To the person who finally sees through this illusion, Knott is not” (Webb, 63). Because Mr. Knott is never seen by his servants, he remains in existence, for he is not there. Thus, Mr. Knott exemplifies the illusion of a higher metaphysical entity and because Watt never learns anything of his employer, Watt becomes disillusioned with the world.

When Watt begins to work for Mr. Knott, he is introduced to life at Mr. Knott’s residence by Arsene, a man who later mysteriously disappears. Arsene serves as a servant for Mr. Knott together with Erskine. Erskine ultimately leaves as well, and he is replaced by a man named Arthur. Mr. Knott always has two servants working for him, one on the first floor and one on the ground floor. The novel never clarifies why Knott needs two servants, because he

evidently seems to require nothing. Part Two ends with Watt reflecting on his time spent at Mr. Knott’s residence: “What had he learnt? Nothing. What did he know of Mr. Knott? Nothing. Of his anxiety to improve, of his anxiety to understand, of his anxiety to get well, what remained? Nothing” (Beckett, 121). Part Three differs from Part Two, as the narration comes from a man called Sam. Fletcher explains: “When the third part opens, we learn that Watt has been telling the whole of this story to Sam, a fellow inmate of an institution that is evidently a mental hospital” (Fletcher, 61). Thus, the third part is comprised of Sam narrating Watt’s life to the reader: “The following is an example of Watt’s manner, at this period […]” (Beckett, 134). Throughout Watt’s stay at Knott’s house, he seems disposed to use words to grasp reality, however, Watt ultimately learns that there is always a division between language and truth. The change in narration in Part Three adds to this “unbridgeable gap between the word and the thing”, for Sam uses words to describe Watt’s life (Webb, 65). However, in Watt, words can never fully grasp reality and thus, the reality of Watt’s life remains unknown. As such, Watt never completely understands his reality, nor himself. He leaves Knott’s house disillusioned, and as Part Three shows, ends up in an asylum, driven mad by the unintelligibility of life.

3.4 Absurdism in Watt.

Even more so than Murphy, Watt contains many absurdist elements in both plot and structure. For one, Watt’s universe seems inescapably meaningless, even though he tries with all his

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might to find any form of truth in Mr. Knott’s house: “[…] the outer meaning had a bad effect on Watt, for it caused him to seek for another, for some meaning of what has passed, in the image of how it had passed” (Beckett, 58). As mentioned in Chapter 1, Mr. Knott can be interpreted as a prime example of an absurdist character: “Knott’s continual changing of shapes signifies that nothing is intelligible because there is a basic absurdity at the heart of the universe” (Webb, 17). The plot of Watt, although relatively straightforward, includes many puzzling scenes where it is almost impossible for the reader to deduce what actually happens. Moreover, structurally, Watt encompasses many absurd aspects as well, including numerous linguistic repetitions, sentences which go on for pages, sudden musical notations and question marks which float around on the page without reason. Watt is trapped in his own repetitive and lyrical language, which is the only way he can try to comprehend his world is by thinking and talking. One of the ways in which Watt can comprehend the world around him is listing possibilities, with which he seems to be obsessed:

Other possibilities occurred to Watt, in this connexion, but he put them aside, and quite out of his mind, as unworthy of serious consideration, for the time being. The time would come, perhaps, when they would be worthy of serious consideration, and then, if he could, he would summon them to his mind, and consider them seriously (Beckett, 72).

McDonald explains this need for Watt to control: “The methods of description, where all the possibilities are exhaustively listed, may seem bizarre, but in another sense they signal a mania for order, for covering every possibility, for obsessive narrative control of events” (McDonald, 83). McDonald argues that this obsession with order feels like a “compensatory strategy” for all the uncertainties and oddities in the novel. The only form of control Watt possesses is the control he exercises over his language and his thoughts, although he is frequently doubting his ideas as well: “But what do I know of Mr. Knott? Nothing. And what to me may seem most unlike him and what to me may seem most like him, may in reality be most like him, most unlike him, for all I can tell” (Beckett, 97). Watt tries to order his disorderly world through language, by listing every possibility and contemplating every solution to an array of problems, but ultimately he has to conclude that he knows nothing. 3.5 No Escape: Circularity and Time.

An additional element of Watt which strengthens the futility of Watt’s search for meaning is the way in which time is organized in the novel. In Watt’s language, there are many

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repetitions of phrases and words, certainly when he is listing possibilities: “For with men and women, with men’s men and women’s men, with men’s women and women’s women, with men’s and women’s men, with men’s and women’s women, all is possible, as far can be ascertained, in this connexion” (Beckett, 113). Repetitions seem to provide Watt with a sense of certainty and a sense of control. Repetitions also feature a prominent role in the plot of

Watt. Webb argues that Watt encompasses “cyclical time”:

The idea that time goes through repetitious patterns is implicit in Proust, but in Beckett is quite elaborately developed. Watt, leaving Knott’s house, has learned that there is no certain knowledge of reality, but nothing can prevent his “for ever falling” into the same “old error”, the mistake of trying to understand the unintelligible” (Webb, 31)

Watt seems doomed to repeat the same patterns, forever searching but without finding meaning. The circle is extended to his line of work as well, for he replaces Arsene and at the end, Watt is replaced by another servant. Each of these servants goes through the same cycle of disillusionment, as Arsene recalls to Watt in their first meeting:

And if I could begin it all over again, knowing what I know now, the result would be the same. And if I could begin again a third time, knowing what I would know then, the result would be the same. And if I could begin it all over again a hundred times, knowing each time a little more than the time before, the result would always be the same, and the hundredth life as the first, and the hundred lives as one (Beckett, 38). The servants leave Mr. Knott’s house without any knowledge, and thus, the coming and going of servants constitutes a circle as well. Circularity is noticeable in other elements of the novel as well, such as Watt’s encounter with a strange painting:

And he wondered what the artist had intended to represent (Watt knew nothing about painting), a circle and its centre in search of each other, or a circle and its centre in search of a centre and a circle respectively, or a circle and its centre in search of a centre and its circle respectively, or a circle and its centre in search of a centre and its circle respectively […] (Beckett, 104).

The circle and its centre is also applicable to Watt’s story – the centre is his time at Mr. Knott’s house, encased in a circle by his arrival and departure from the train station. Watt’s journey starts in a realistic setting and ends in a realistic setting. These settings enclose the

"Nothingness in Words Enclose": Identity and Absence in Three Early Novels by Samuel Beckett.

“Nothingness in Words Enclose”: Identity and Absence in

Three Early Novels by Samuel Beckett.

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