Critical Evaluation

Download PDF PDF Page Citation Cite Share Link Share

Samuel Beckett, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969, is best known for his avant-garde plays, but he is also considered one of the most important experimental novelists of the twentieth century. Molloy, the first novel of a trilogy that is followed by Malone meurt (1951; Malone Dies, 1956) and L’Innommable (1953; The Unnamable, 1958), is considered his single greatest work of fiction. Although Molloy has been interpreted from many perspectives, including Jungian, Freudian, Christian, and existential, Beckett has made it impossible for any one theory entirely to explain his novel. He has deliberately created an ambiguous text, which, although it includes mythic and philosophical aspects, constantly subverts the attempt to secure clarity and order. Beckett blends irony, despair, lyrical poetry, tragedy, and an anarchic comedy in a narrative that is both realistic and dreamlike. The work can appear to be both about everything that matters and about nothing at all.

Although there are many theories concerning the meaning of the novel, a useful starting point is to explore its structure, which appears to be one of division. The small episode involving the characters of A and C at the beginning of the novel is often seen as an outline for the novel as a whole, because it gives us an image of “twoness.” The novel itself is divided into two chapters of roughly equal length. Like A and C, who come from opposite directions, the two first-person narratives, one by Molloy and one by Moran, seem to represent opposite points of view.

Each section of this novel is a psychological character study of a different man. The first chapter, narrated by Molloy, dispenses with traditional storytelling, instead using an unparagraphed, rambling, stream-of-consciousness style. Molloy is a dilapidated vagabond, with little sense of personal worth or significance. Obsessed with excrement and bodily functions, often helpless, moody, and confused, he seems to have entered a second childhood. Miserable, despairing, surrounded by a clutter of unmanageable objects, Molloy finds time to be slow, empty, and punctuated by trivial flurries of fruitless energy. He is filled with anxiety and boredom. Although he still possesses an astute analytical mind, he is utterly convinced that his experience is incomprehensible, and he ends up using his sharp intellect to sort out matters of tremendous inconsequence, such as the order of his sucking stones. Molloy does pursue one real goal, that of being reunited with his mother, with whom he has a love-hate relationship and who is psychologically present in all his relationships with women, but his quest is only ambiguously resolved by his return to his mother’s room. Molloy’s narrative also touches on the master-narratives of such figures as Ulysses, Aeneas, Christ, and Dante, but Beckett deploys these parallels tentatively or even ironically. Although Molloy represents a kind of life force, eternally ongoing even when only going in circles, the sense of continuation must always take into account the desolate nature of his existence.

Molloy is obsessed with his mother; Moran is a father living in a world of fathers. The sole woman in Moran’s life is a servant, Martha. His employer, Youdi, suggests the Hebrew God Yahweh, with Gaber as the angel Gabriel. To further consolidate this hint of a theological order, Moran also consults with the local priest, Father Ambrose. Moran exists within a network of conformity, religious scruples, routines, and material possessions, at the center of which is the authority of the father. Within this patriarchal hierarchy, Moran is an obsessional and paranoid domestic tyrant, punctilious to the point of sadism in his role as a father...

(This entire section contains 996 words.)

Unlock this Study Guide Now

Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.

Get 48 Hours Free Access

to his own resentful son.

As soon as he is sent on his quest for Molloy, however, Moran begins to undergo an identity crisis. One can interpret Moran’s story as that of a psychological breakdown and, more specifically, a breakdown into the side of himself that is like the hobo Molloy. As his journey unfolds, he fails to do his job and instead kills a man in the forest who closely resembles him. Although Moran’s character begins with a sense of distinction between himself and Molloy (Moran is the detective, Molloy the object of his search; Moran is a respectable householder, Molloy is homeless) Moran’s narrative ultimately undercuts these surface distinctions as the various meanings that have given shape and coherence to his life fail him. Increasingly, Molloy becomes a reference with which to understand what is happening to Moran. Moran’s journey, which can be said to be a journey into his own unconscious, is one of disintegration and loss. It is significant that it is only when Moran has psychically dissolved into Molloy that we find a reference to a mother—the earth mother or “turdy Madonna.” Moran’s conventionally successful adult persona is exposed as a false self, and as his identity merges with Molloy’s, the division between the two narratives is called into question.

Molloy and Moran can be viewed as one of Beckett’s famous “pseudocouples,” that is, as two parts of the same psyche. Their narratives features many parallel details: Both Moran and Molloy are in a house writing; both have a visitor who is always thirsty; both assault someone in the forest; both ride a bicycle and use crutches; both follow a pattern of quest, disintegration, and failure; and both circle back home. Moran’s search for Molloy and Molloy’s search for his mother can be viewed as the same quest pursued on different levels, and for both the creative activity of writing is the end product of their quest. Molloy, however, remains the foundation of the novel, especially since Moran disintegrates, and the style with which he tells his story evolves into that of Molloy. Although Molloy appears to be older and more sickly than Moran, a Moran yet-to-come, he also seems to be archaeologically first, existing in an earlier, repressed layer of Moran’s unconscious. Considered in this light, Molloy is above all a psychological study.