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1 results

  • Chapter 9 - Distressed Embodiment and the Burdens of Boredom

  • Ato Quayson, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature
    Published online:
    05 February 2021
    Print publication:
    21 January 2021, pp 264-297

  • Summary

    In Beckett’s Murphy in Chapter 9, we find that the eponymous character’s quest for self-validation is an aspect of an autistic spectrum disorder and that it is his relentless attraction to patterns that draws him to Mr. Endon. In the game of chess between Endon and Murphy, it is the former’s refutation of any kind of analogy that spins Murphy out of himself and ultimately leads, in an absurd but also interconnected concatenation of small steps, to his death by a gas explosion in his garret. As in other works of Beckett, our attention is rivetted on the absurd semiotic of language itself as an aspect of hermeneutical delirium. This is closely tied to Murphy’s aporetic speech that is also part of his autistic syndrome. The failure to find a reflection of himself in the mind of Mr. Endon is what ultimately undoes Murphy’s sense of self-integration and triggers his rapid unravelling.