Abstract
Keeping to the affect-based interpretive framework introduced in Chap. 2, this chapter examines Waiting for Godot and a number of Beckett’s later dramas’ articulation of a model of empowerment based in intersectional solidarity and apt to short-circuit hierarchical distribution on multiple levels. It also further defines Beckett’s positive mobilization of interpreters’ anger as a solidarity-based appeal to reject all forms of socially enforced “closure” for our unresolved pain—one of the main ruses used by repressive structures to convincingly pose as social cohesion structures before potential victims, so as to co-opt their support.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Beckett’s reiterated refusal to allow any parts to be played by women seems to indicate that gender-specific forms of conditioning and repression had been core concerns of character construction in this play, as in others. In a 11 July 1973 letter to Barney Rosset, Beckett explains, “I am against women playing Godot … . Theatre sex is not interchangeable and Godot by women would sound as spurious as Happy Days or Not I played by men” (L4 335–36). Beckett arguably dramatized, in increasingly corrosive ways, traditional male socialization and normalization in plays like Waiting for Godot , and women’s subjection to patriarchal exploitation and repression through prominent female characters in other plays.
- 2.
The first time they discuss hanging themselves, they even try to compare body weights to ensure that the heavier one would not be left alone in the world—as Estragon explains, “Gogo light—bough not break—Gogo dead. Didi heavy—bough break—Didi alone. Whereas—” (CDW 18). However, they cannot be sure that Vladimir is, as they suspect, heavier, so Estragon concludes, “Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer” (18).
- 3.
Beckett initially translated documents for a Paris-based Resistance cell connected to London but went into hiding in Rousillon when his cell was betrayed and the Gestapo started to arrest its members; he started Watt in Paris and completed it while in hiding on the way to Rousillon and while residing there (Knowlson 297–339). All the plays discussed at length in this book and most of the works of fiction were written after the war. In addition to Knowlson, for an account of the Nazi persecution of Resistance members and of the risks taken by Beckett and his partner during this period, also see Harvey (348–49), Uhlmann (the chapter on Molloy and surveillance in Beckett and Poststructuralism), Perloff (“Samuel Beckett’s War”), Gordon, and Salisbury (“Gloria SMH”).
- 4.
The obsessive image of Mouth and the watching, silent Auditor seemingly came to Beckett’s mind before any notion of what Mouth might say. In a 23 February 1972 letter to Barbara Bray, he reports, “Vague image for a short play of a lit face (mouth) with? to say and a cloaked hooded figure, sex unclear, completely still throughout, listening and watching. Latter suggested by an Arab woman all hidden in black absolutely motionless at the gate of a school in Taroudant and by the watching figures in the Caravaggio Malta decollation. Might produce 10 min. strangeness if text found. Only glimmer of consciousness all this time” (L4 287). Beckett’s reference to the Arab djellaba has been widely referenced in criticism, yet his second stated source of inspiration, Caravaggio’s Beheading of St. John the Baptist, far less frequently. It is, however, worth stressing that the latter seems to suggest a disturbingly voyeuristic and not fully benevolent quality to the Auditor’s figure. A 15 March 1986 letter to New School for Social Research professor Edith Kern (New York) strengthens this suggestion: “The Caravaggio painting in Valletta shows, outside & beyond the main area, at a safe distance from it, a group of watchers intent on the happening. Before the painting, from another outsidedness, I behold both the horror & its being beheld. This experience had some part in the conception of the Auditor in Not I ” (671). The figure of the Auditor appears to have been meant as a complex commentary on the social mechanics of victimization and “witnessing” rather than as an unambiguous symbol of compassion.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ionica, C. (2020). The Liberating Laughter of “Nearly There”: Beckett’s Solidarity-Building Dramas. In: The Affects, Cognition, and Politics of Samuel Beckett's Postwar Drama and Fiction. New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34902-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34902-8_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34901-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34902-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)