The Unnamable Book

The Unnamable

Samuel Beckett

A masterpiece from Samuel Beckett, though may be a bit awkward to read,could be indecipherable at times but after a while you move with the flow and get consumed by it; it would be felt like a novel that does not have any plot, only some disjointed images which would stay in your mind. The book is not a prose actually rather it can be said as a long dazzling poem on the very human existence. The Unnameable, where the dilemmas, which were brought up by the author in Molloy and Malone Dies, finally come along here.

The starting lines themselves set the tone for the book,
Where now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypothesis, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on. Can it be that one day, off it goes on, that one day I simply stayed in, in where, instead of going out, in the old way, out to spend day and night as far away as possible, it wasn't far. Perhaps that is how it began.




There are only thoughts thinking themselves, ever babbling around but never moving forward. The narrative of the books is also not reliable, just like narrator, which keeps on changing throughout the book from first person to third. The narrator, or rather self-immersive narrator, of the book goes with its title and is unnamable in true self, who is unreliable and just shares his thoughts, immobile for eternity, uncommunicative, always curious about words themselves but not their meanings.

But the absurd! Of me whom they have reduced to reason. It is true poor Worm in not to blame for this. That's soon said. But let me complete my views before I shit on them. For if I am Mahood, I am Worm too, plop. Or if I am not yet Worm, I shall be when I cease to be Mahood, plop.

Unfortunately I am afraid, as always, of going on. For to go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swallows me up, I'll never know, which is perhaps merely the inside of my distant skull where once I wandered, now am fixed, lost for tininess, or straining against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever murmuring my old stories, my old story, as if it were the first time








The book could be said as a well crafted voice of suffering, oppression of humanity through a un-namable character, whose existence itself is only a huge cry in dark solitude. The book ponders upon various problems of existence- solitude, human suffering- even the very problem of existence itself- meaning of existence, problem of one's ontological loneliness and nothingness of life; the narrator succeeds in scaling down his need - from wanting to reach his mother, to wanting to die, to wanting to stop speaking, which in essence is stripping of humanity to the core problems of life, to the core of life itself to know what is down there. Yet amid all the evidence that life is meaningless, hopeless, full of despair, anguish, one must go on. The book could be called as a representative of human consciousness trying to come to terms with its existence by telling itself stories featuring itself as hero of its own fictions, it resorts to paradox to describe the paradoxical nature of human consciousness divided within itself.

....there was never anyone, anyone but me. anything but me, talking me to me, impossible to stop, impossible to go on, but I must go on, I'll go on, without anyone, without anything, but me, but my voice, that is to say I'll stop, I'll end, it's the end already, short-lived, what is it, a little hole, you go down into it, into the silence, it's worse than the noise, you listen, it's worse than talking, no, not worse, no worse, you wait, in anguish, have they forgotten me, no, yes, no someone calls me, I crawl out again, what is it, a little hole, in the wilderness.






Beckett has worked on Postmodernist themes in ''The Unnamable'' as it could said to be based upon post-structuralist literary theory; whose characteristic is abandonment of grand narratives and unification of all knowledge. The novel is almost without "significant" event; its subject is itself, the narrating voice creating a world out of language. Before, between and after the jabber of words that constitute the fiction is silence.

...all these stories, these stories about paralytics, all are mine, I must be extremely old, or it's memory playing tricks, if only I knew id I've lived, if I live, if I'll live, that would simplify everything, impossible to find out, that's where you'are buggered, I haven't stirred, that's all I know, no I know something else, it's not, I always forget that, I resume, you must resume, never stirred from here, never stopped telling stories, to myself, hardly hearing them, hearing something else, listening for something else, wondering now and then where I got them from, was I in the land of the living, were they in mine, and where, where do I store them, in my head, I don't feel a head on me, and what do I tell them with, with my mouth, same remark, and what do I hear them with, and so on, the old rigmarole, it can't be I, or it's because I pay no heed, it's such an old habit, I do it without heeding, or as if I were somewhere else, there I am far again, there I am the absentee again, it's turn again now, he who neither speaks nor listens, who has neither body nor soul, it's something else he has, he must be somewhere, he is made of silence, there's a pretty analysis, he's in the silence, he's the one to be sought, the one to be, the one to be spoken of , the one to speak, but he can't speak, then I could stop, I'd be he, I'd be silence, I'd be back in the silence, we'd be reunited, his story the story to be told, but he has no story, he .............

I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that, one must have something, it's a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that's enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there's only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it's steps coming and going, it's voices speaking for a moment, it's bodies groping their way, it's the air, it's things, it's the air among the things, that's enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning.





As one gradually moves towards the inevitable end of the book, it may be felt like a lucid dream is coming to end, which one may have started to enjoy now and may feel an urge to be forever in that dream; but there's no need to go on, what could one get even if one goes on, for there's nothing to be achieved, nothing could be achieved, there was never anything to be achieved; life is so, one can't give any inherent purpose to life, there's no inherent purpose of life, there was never any inherent purpose of life, however one must go on, one will go on.