The novel Murphy (1938) was Samuel Beckett's third work of prose fiction. It was written in English, unlike much of Beckett's later writing, which he composed in French. After many rejections, it was published by Routledge on the recommendation of Beckett's painter friend Jack Yeats.

Plot summary

The plot of Murphy follows an eponymous "seedy solipsist" who, urged to find a job by his lover Celia Kelly, begins work as a male nurse at the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat, and finds the insanity of the patients an appealing alternative to conscious existence.

Murphy is an important example of Beckett's fascination with the artistic and metaphorical possibilities of chess. Near the novel's end, Murphy plays a game of chess with Mr. Endon, a patient who is "the most biddable little gaga in the entire institution". But Murphy cannot replicate his opponent's symmetrical and cyclical play, just as he is unable to will himself into a state of catatonic bliss. He resigns "with fool's mate in his soul", and dies shortly afterwards. Beckett relates the game in full English notation, complete with a comically arch commentary.

Moving between Ireland and England, the novel is caustically satirical at the expense of the Irish Free State, which had recently banned Beckett's More Pricks Than Kicks: the astrologer consulted by Murphy is famous 'throughout civilised world and Irish Free State'; 'for an Irish girl' Murphy's admirer Miss Counihan was 'quite exceptionally anthropoid'; and in the General Post Office, site of the 1916 Rising, Neary assaults the buttocks of Oliver Sheppard's statue of mythic Irish hero Cuchulainn (the statue in fact possesses no buttocks). The novel also contains a scabrous portrait of poet Austin Clarke as the dipsomaniac Austin Ticklepenny, given to unreciprocated 'manstruprations' of Murphy under the table; against Oliver St John Gogarty's advice, Clarke declined to sue.

Murphy indeed cannot go insane to achieve freedom. What he turns to instead is nothingness, and his ashes are properly spread amidst the grime of a bar. Celia also discovers the beauty of nothingness, as she loses her love, Murphy, and her grandfather's health declines. Beckett seamlessly converts comedy to terror of non-existence, as he does in his later work, Waiting for Godot.

Among the many thinkers to influence Murphy's mind-body debate are Spinoza, Descartes and the little-known Belgian Occasionalist Arnold Geulincx.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Samuel Beckett

Donate to Wikimedia