Molloy (1951)
by Samuel Beckett
(Summary)
Summary of Molloy (1951) –
Samuel Beckett
Molloy opens in a place of
uncertainty, both physical and mental. A man named Molloy is writing from what
appears to be his mother’s room, though whether she is alive, dead, or ever
truly present remains unclear. He does not know how he arrived there. He writes
because he is told to write, submitting pages to a mysterious authority who
collects them. From the beginning, Molloy’s voice is fragmented, hesitant, and
riddled with contradictions. Memory fails him constantly, and yet he presses
on, compelled to tell his story even when it collapses in his hands.
Molloy recalls that he had
once lived alone, wandering aimlessly with crutches due to his crippled legs.
His life is governed by bodily needs—hunger, pain, fatigue—and by strange
systems of thought that attempt, and always fail, to impose order on chaos. One
of the most famous episodes involves Molloy’s sucking stones, which he carries
in his pockets and rotates in an elaborate system so that each stone is sucked
an equal number of times. The logic is intricate, obsessive, and ultimately
pointless, mirroring Molloy’s own existence: vast effort expended toward no
meaningful end.
At some point, Molloy
decides—or believes he has decided—to visit his mother, though he cannot
remember where she lives or why he needs to see her. He sets off on a journey
that is less a movement through space than a gradual disintegration of self. As
he travels, his physical condition worsens. He increasingly crawls rather than
walks. His sense of time dissolves. Events repeat, contradict, or cancel one
another.
Along the way, Molloy
encounters various figures who briefly intrude into his isolation. He meets a
woman named Lousse, who takes him in after he kills her dog—possibly
accidentally, possibly not. Lousse offers Molloy comfort, food, and a kind of
domestic stability, but he finds her presence unbearable. Her attempts at
kindness feel like imprisonment. Unable to remain, Molloy abandons her, returning
to the road, or rather to the formless space where movement barely exists.
Gradually, Molloy loses even
the illusion of progress. His legs cease to function altogether. He drags
himself across the ground, increasingly detached from the world and from
language itself. His sentences become more broken, his memories more
unreliable. Finally, the narrative disintegrates into exhaustion. Molloy can no
longer go on, yet he does. His story ends not with resolution but with
collapse—physical, mental, and narrative.
At this point, the novel
begins again, but from another voice.
The second half introduces
Jacques Moran, a man who appears, at first, to be Molloy’s opposite. Moran is
orderly, authoritarian, devoutly Catholic, and obsessed with routine. He lives
with his son, also named Jacques, and prides himself on discipline and control.
One day, Moran receives instructions from a shadowy figure named Youdi,
delivered through an intermediary called Gabay, ordering him to find Molloy.
Moran sets out on this mission
with confidence, convinced that reason, method, and obedience will guide him.
He brings his son along, treating the journey like a military operation.
However, as the journey progresses, Moran’s world begins to unravel in ways
eerily similar to Molloy’s. His body weakens; his leg stiffens painfully,
mirroring Molloy’s crippling condition. His son becomes distant, then
disappears. His religious faith erodes. His sense of authority collapses.
The farther Moran travels,
the less certain he becomes about his purpose. He never finds Molloy—or perhaps
he does, but cannot recognize him. Events lose sequence and logic. His careful
notes become incoherent. The man who once enforced order now lives in filth,
confusion, and fear. He commits acts of violence without fully understanding
why. Like Molloy, he is trapped in a world where intention leads nowhere.
Eventually, Moran returns
home—or believes he does—only to find that nothing is as it was. His house is
no longer his. His role has vanished. He receives new instructions, telling him
to write a report of his mission. Obediently, he begins to write, just as
Molloy did.
At this moment, the novel
closes its circle. Moran, once the pursuer, has become indistinguishable from
the pursued. His voice begins to resemble Molloy’s. Authority dissolves into
obedience. Identity collapses into repetition. The reader is left with the
unsettling sense that Molloy and Moran may be the same person, or versions of
the same consciousness, trapped in an endless cycle of command, failure,
narration, and decay.
Molloy ends without
explanation, resolution, or escape. The novel offers no stable reality, no
moral clarity, and no final truth. What remains is the act of speaking—of
continuing to tell a story even when language, memory, and selfhood have broken
down. In Beckett’s world, one does not go on because there is hope, meaning, or
purpose—but because going on is unavoidable.
 by Samuel Beckett (Summary)){kind=link}
0 Comments