Limitation of Language
in Samuel Beckett's
Happy Days
9843009 Naphia
Samuel Beckett (1906~1989)
Happy Days (1961)
Absurd: "out of harmony with reason or
propriety, incongruous, unreasonable,
illogical" (Martin Esslin,2001)
=> rejects language as an instrument for
expressing meanings in its deepest levels
Fritz Mauthner
Critique of Language
one of the first works:
"fallibility of language as a medium for the
discovery and communication of
metaphysical truths"
Beckett...
• poverty of language
• 'reducing knowledge to speaking'
• 'that the writer could merely allow
characters to speak and their words
would become signs, not of knowledge,
but rather of the failure of knowledge'
Happy Days
Winnie - immobile, stuck in the mound
- non-stop talking
- optimistic
Willy
- most of the time invisible
- Winnie's attempted interlocutor
Winnie
• immobility
• reliance on speech
Winnie:...What is that unforgettable
line? [Pause. Eyes right.] Willie.
[Pause. Louder.] Willie. [Pause. Eye
front.] May one still speak of time?
[Pause.]..
(Beckett, 1986:160)
'the old style'
• no certainty
• failure in recalling and accessing to a
time or space
• confusion of time
I Speak, therefore You Are
Winnie: 'I say I used to think that I
would learn to talk alone. [Pause.] By
that I mean to myself, the wilderness.
[Smile.] But no. [Smile broader.] No no.
[Smile off.] Ergo you are there.
[Pause.]'(Beckett, 1986:160)
Irony
• vulnerability of man of reliance on
language
• language fails
Language as a capital or object
Winnie: 'Something says, Stop talking now,
Winnie, for a minute, don't squander all
your words for the day...' (Beckett,
1986:155)
1.Talking
2.Trivial actions with limited objects from
her bag
Language
Instrument of communication?
language is 'all one can do'
(Beckett, 1986:145)
Treated as a Tool for survival to pass her
days
Language
[Pause.]
•fragments of uncertain source
•short memories
•disintegration
Subjectivity
• essential to the existence
• nature of language:
complementary "ego" and "you"
(interlocutor)
Subjectivity
• must be ensured by the accessibility of
the others
• individual v.s society
Subjectivity
• Winnie's one-sidedness:
o she 'can well imagine what is passing
through your [his] mind...Well it is very
understandable.'
• avoidance of failure
• 'fictional interlocutor'
• no relevance to reality
Optimism
• Belief? World View?
• lack of relevance to reality
• no productivity
• empty refrains
Limitation of Language
• senseless, meaningless, absurd world
• unlived life with no actual transmission
and reception of inner message
References
1. Ben-Zvi, "Samuel Beckett, Fritz Mauthner and the Limits of Language"
2. Johnson, Julian. "The Breaking of the Voice" Nineteeth-Century Music Review.
Cambridge University Press, 2011.
3. Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. 3rd ed. London: Pelican, 2001.
Print. 86.
4. Beckett, Samuel. "The Complete Dramatic Works" (1986) England: Clays,
1990. Print.
5. Carrière, Julien F. "Samuel Beckett and Bilingualism: How the Return to
English Influences the Later Writing Style and Gender Role of All That Fall
and Happy
6. Days" (2005), 154
7. Pavel, Thomas G. "Understanding Narrative". 7. Naturallizing Molloy The Ohio
State University Press. Web. 1994.
8. Brown, Llewellyn. "Cliche and Voice in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days"
The End