Beckett's Unnamables: Schizophrenia, Rationalism, and the Novel

The multiple aspects of schizophrenia exhibited in Beckett's trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, may be examined from three perspectives: psychological, philosophical, and literary. In a psychiatric context, Molloy's monologue presents a valid etiology of Beckett's people's schizophrenic behavior, an etiology which accounts for not only the novels' crazy language, but for the language of schizophrenic patients as well. Beckett's people dramatize the work of Winnicott, Laing and Searles in ways which tend to support the following conclusion: given the characters' relations with their mothers, their subsequent lack of individuation, and consequent developmental impairments (as reported or implied in the novels), it is perfectly logical that Beckett's people (or indeed any healthy person) behave and communicate in the severely distorted forms with which we identify schizophrenia.

Moreover, the novel form provides the philosophical underpinnings of schizophrenic language; Beckett's people speak the way they do (1) because they have incorrect conceptions of what words are supposed to do and of how language works, and (2) because their lack of a healthy psychological structure extends to their ontological insecurities and episte-mological confusion. Bringing ordinary language theory and specific Cartesian philosophy to bear on Beckett's novels will lay bare the philosophical causes (etiology) of schizophrenic language and behavior. Finally, this study will examine how the novel as a structure of conventions has been altered to accommodate, and in places, to mimic, the madness it articulates. As Beckett has said, “To find a form that will accommodate the mess, that is the task of the artist now” (Driver, 23).