• English & American cultural studies
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.59-81
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• 2013

Samuel Beckett's literary sympathies with underdogs enslaved to authoritative figures, found in his earliest plays, continued in a more or less subdued form in his later plays: Not I is a good case in point thematizing a social authority psychologically embedded within a subject. The incessant bouts of self-defense, or confessional, which Mouth carries out on a dark stage is directed to an inner authority. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1931), Freud's diagnosis for individuals torn between the opposite calls of a social order-- which he called, by turns, civil society, civilization, and culture--and of individual freedom was a "neurosis." What Not I dramatizes seems to be this state of neurosis suffered by a subject bound to the contradictory calls of an internal social authority, which forces Mouth to carry on a confessional till she obtains a symbolically/linguistically viable social title of "I," and of her individualistic denial of the position("what?..who?..no!.. she!.."). Mouth's ordeal on stage does not signify the psychological pressure of the social system, with its disciplinary measures of guilt, justice, and punishment, triumphs over individualistic irregularities and abnormalities, for her "maddened" confession will never see its closure. The opposite psychological forces at work inside Mouth, who is both "in" and "out[side]" "this world," will keep engaging in an eternal battle. In a way, she is a perfect parable about us humans living within a system, "discontent" and hung between the contradictory calls of individualism and social collectiveness.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.611-632
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• 2012

Beckett's life-long struggling with death may be illuminated in terms of the Western tradition of thanatology as well as Philippe Ariès's anthropological classification of death. Among the Western tradition, Beckett's oeuvre incarnates memento mori, timor mori, nihilism, theatrum mundi, life as afterlife, and the transsubstantiation of the self. Among the five views of death Ariès suggests, Beckett appears to foreground the death of the self and the invisible dirty death. In a world devoid of transcendental Signified, Beckett's resident is "a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage." Our contemporary vision of death is dominated by the dirty death and timor mori resurrected from the cultural icon of danse macabre in the late Mediaeval age as vividly dramatized in W;t by Margaret Edson. Beckett stands in no man's land: Lucky complains of divine aphathia as well as scopes at the possibility of God's existence like Hamm. Beckett's way of getting out of the dilemma is laughing a mirthless and dianoetic laugher. To bourgeois class who shudder at the sight of Grim Death after forgettable years of indulgence and addiction to capitalist consumption, Beckett seems to preach, your life is a death-in-life, you are not born yet until you are baptized with existential awakening as Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Verwandlung, or Tolstoy in Confession.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.73-97
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• 2010

Representation of destitution may be considered as an expression of a social desire toward forging a bond or solidarity with the impoverished. However, political and ethical demands of the solidarity force the formulaic framework structuring the form of representation to its limits. The thesis aims to examine the responses to such demands within the tradition of modernist literature that can be traced from Charles Baudelaire, Knut Hamsun to Franz Kafka and that somehow culminates with Samuel Beckett, and to analyze how the issue of destitution that weaves through Beckett's works criticizes and inherits such a heritage. Whereas destitution in 19th century Realism is structurally fixed and its potential for change is inherently excluded, for these writers, destitution is no longer the state of rigid reality in which any possibility is limited. It is destitution as an imperative that calls for exploitation of possibilities that can be recuperated from the impoverished condition of destitution. What these writers consistently resist against is destitution that leads to compensation and reward. Since occupying a superior position toward the other as the subject of description or sympathy can be seen as one form of profit or reward, they have persistently pursued absolute solitariness and austere conditions rather than prematurely simulating a sense of solidarity and community. The ultimate goal of destitution as an imperative is to pursue destitution in order to worsen it by identifying and then excluding and expending possessions and assets to a state of penury. This is a paradoxical process that opens up the realm of possibilities of destitution and redefines it as abundance and wealth. Destitution for Beckett as seen in the writers above is the objective of literature. But, what he focuses on is to amplify the shreds of economic world that still remain in a state of poverty and to reveal extreme poverty as a state of odd affluence and to transform it into a pursuit of accumulation and profit. One of his famous axioms, "less is more", contains the essence of such a paradoxical strategy. In a sense, such approach is a twist on the strategy that identifies and uses any remaining potential hidden in destitution as was pursued by other writers. It also expands on the imagination of the destitute described by Hamsun. But Hamsun and Beckett are diametrical opposites. Unlike Hamsun, Beckett does not link imagination with a sense of guilt. Imagination is not intended to overcome the destitute reality nor to culminate in artistic martyrdom as in the case of Kafka's hunger artist. The imagination of the impoverished in Beckett is simply a hilarious game and not an escape that ends in a sense of guilt. This game formulates a "rhetorical question" or derision at the ironical situation where the pursuit of hunger and art as the disinterestedness has been turned into symbolic capital. It is inherently a fundamental critique at the aestheticization of destitution that has been pursued by Modernism. Beckett's efforts at divulging falsehood inherent in non-profit acts such as charity, donation and hospitality are dissections of social fictions in which aestheticization of destitution remains a part of the whole.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.242-249
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• 2019

This study examined the wounds and healing of the character as a woman in Samuel Beckett's play, Happy Days, through a microscopic approach by focusing on her inner I, and to study how she tries to heal her wounds. Winnie in Happy Days spends hard times not recognizing her internal wounds and pains. By facing her wounds and pains, however, she starts the process of self-healing, mainly through communicating and sharing her sorrows with her past inner child. Winnie's positive and optimistic character appears to change Willie's behaviors, which may be a positive sign that her wounds and pains will possibly be healed. In conclusion, Winnie has a chance to face her inner wounds and pains while interacting and communicating with her husband Willie, and she is slowly heading for healing her wounded inner I.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.17-32
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• 2012

This study explores the concept of postmodernism in literature. There are many ideas which have conflicted with each other, but now postmodernism is real concept. We cannot deny. By researching papers of Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Ihab Hassan etc. we find out many characteristics of postmodernism. From that, we propose a conceptual understanding of postmodern literature as follows: Starting from the late 1910s with the poetry of Dadaism (1916), Franz Kafka's prose (Metamorphosis 1915) and drama by Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot 1953), postmodern literature coexists with modern literature and is a thriving form from 1960 on. Postmodernism is opposed to modernism in nature in that it accepts nothingness, chaos, games and intertextuality. It tries to solve some difficult problems of modernism making use of science to free people from a life of darkness and dogma. Postmodernism is associated with the information technology revolution, an economic, scientific and technological boom and rapid urbanization.