Not so critically acclaimed, Samuel Beckett managed to write a trilogy – Malloy, Mallone Dies and The Unnamable that primarily established his reputation as an Avante garde writer. The Unnamable is the third and final part of Samuel Beckett’s trilogy published in 1953 and is the most radical of the three.
The form is that of a continuous monologue narrated by an unnamed narrator. The Unnamable talks of the unnamed narrator and his finds in uncertain circumstances, an enormous dark space where all he can witness is “dim intermittent lights”.
Table of Contents
Publication
The Unnamable was written in 1953 and was originally published in French as L’Innommable and later translated by the author into English. The English edition was published in 1958 by the Grove Press.
The Unnamable: Structure
The novel’s structure is relatively simple, its methods are said to have been borrowed from Descartes. It is a narrative on the human existence being reduced to its elemental function, consciousness, using sensory impressions recorded on consciousness and stored on the tabula of memory.
The Unnamable is written with the aid of a disjointed monologue from the perspective of an unnamed (that is why the title Unnamable, might have been chosen in the first place) and an immobile protagonist.
There is no concrete plot an always or a definite setting, and The Unnamable arrives out of recollections and the existential crisis on the part of the unnamed narrator, many of which pertain specifically to the possibility that the narrator is shaped and constructed by the language he speaks: “I’m in words, made of words, others’ words, what others, the place too, the air, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, all words, the whole world is here with me, I’m the air, the walls, the walled in one, everything yields, opens, ebbs, flows…”
Characters in The Unnamable
Mahood is what the narrator is called in parts, and in parts, he is called Worm, but his search for his ‘self’ makes us less certain about his connection with either of these two. In fact, to the readers, Mahood and Worm seem to function as a trope as the narrator calls them in order to enable him to situate himself outside so as to see himself.
The narrator’s body is described as “curled in the fetal position”, as a limbless body stuck in a deep glass jar, and as a featureless egg-like creature. It is doubtful whether or not the other characters -“Mahood”, “Madeleine” and “Worm” actually exist or whether they are a construct of the narrator himself. The protagonist also claims authorship of the main characters in the two previous novels of the trilogy, as well as Beckett’s earlier novels like Murphy, Mercier and Camier, and Watt.
Plot
The novel is about the search, to define and name oneself, to examine the role of language in the systematized structure of the world. Such existentialist themes often recur in the Beckettian world. The narrator in the story says that his aim is to speak about himself, but after he finishes his “pensum,” a written punishment is instilled by these “delegates”.
He mentions one of those people, Basil, but then changes his name to Mahood, who relays stories, as if they happened to him. The first story revolves around the death of the narrator’s family due to sausage poisoning and the second revolves around the narrator’s existence in a jar, without limbs, placed outside of a chop-house in a town that is not specified. Marguerite or Madeleine takes care of the narrator since the narrator brings in customers to her restaurant.
Towards the end, the narrator claims that Mahood’s stories seemed to have ceased because he could no longer convince him that they were the narrator’s own memories.
Theme
The Unnamable is also closely linked to the main themes of negative theology. Since the beginning of the novel, death and silence are two significant tools which have been evoked.
Although Beckett always resisted attaching any external meaning to his works or any kind of assimilation between his works and theological discourses. His writing contains strong biblical themes and allusions. The title phrase, ‘the unnamable’ can be attributed to both God and deference. It deals with the same mystical themes of negation, the limits of language and self, the beyond and the impossible.
His work is therefore defined by the consciousness that words are incapable of expressing the inner self and by the simultaneous acceptance of the fact that language is intrinsic to the human situation and thus not a removable element. Beckett regards language as equivalent to the identity of self.
However, the mystic in this case wants to reject language and speaking because the language seems inadequate to discern the truth. Similarly, the narrator of The Unnamable starts by saying “I shall have to banish them in the end, the beings, things, shapes, sounds and lights with which my haste to speak has encumbered this place. In the frenzy of utterance the concern with the truth”
It is however important to note that although the structure of the quest in both is the same, but the narrator looks at the world beyond, as well as the questions of truth and unity in The Unnamable.
The self and the words are constantly juxtaposed to one another where their negation, their limits. Their movements are thoroughly examined in a parallel way. In other words, the limits of language are juxtaposed with the limits of being and the world. As the story progresses the question of silence and the place to go beyond in the light of language, self, and knowledge becomes important to the narrator.
Conclusion
The Unnamable reveals the difficulty of escaping the unconscious structures-those involving limitations of society as well as memories, which remain so pervasive in human thought that even most attempts to subvert these limitations only serve to reinforce them via the destruction of the individual identity.
The isolation, the complete alienation, of Beckett’s characters, who exist far outside human society and barely resemble any human beings at all recur in many of his plays and novels. Through their situation speak profoundly of the human condition, making the trilogy one of the most moving and effective treatments of the theme of alienation in the 20th century.
FAQs
What is ‘The Unnamable’ about?
The novel is about the search, to define and name oneself, to examine the role of language in the systematized structure of the world. Such existentialist themes often recur in the Beckettian world. It is written with the aid of a disjointed monologue from the perspective of an unnamed (that is why the title Unnamable, might have been chosen in the first place) and an immobile protagonist.
There is no concrete plot or setting, and The Unnamable arrives out of recollections and the existential crisis on the part of the unnamed narrator.
What year did ‘The Unnamable’ come out?
The Unnamable was written in 1953 and published in 1958.