Rockaby (1980) by Samuel Beckett (Summary)

 

Rockaby (1980)

by Samuel Beckett

(Summary) 

Rockaby (1980) — Summary

In a darkened room, almost entirely swallowed by shadow, there sits an old woman alone. She is dressed in black, her thin body rigid, as if already half claimed by death. She occupies a wooden rocking chair placed near a window, the only visible opening to the world beyond. Outside that window is nothing distinct—only the suggestion of life continuing somewhere else. The woman does not speak. She does not move of her own will. She waits.

At her side, unseen but unmistakably present, a recorded voice begins to speak. The voice is her own, though detached from her body, as if memory itself has learned to talk while the flesh has grown silent. At its first utterance, the chair begins to rock—slowly, mechanically—like a cradle for someone who is waiting to be laid to rest rather than brought into life.

The voice tells the story of a woman who has spent her life looking outward from windows, hoping for another presence to appear. In her younger years, she searched from room to room, from house to house, always placing herself beside a window, always peering out, longing to see someone else—anyone—who might reflect her own existence back to her. She believed that if she could see another living soul watching as she watched, her loneliness would be broken.

But each time she looked, she saw nothing. No face. No movement. Only empty streets, blank walls, and the quiet indifference of the world.

The woman in the chair rocks on, her body rigid, her face frozen. The voice continues, recounting how the searching woman grew older, weaker, and more resigned. Her life narrowed. The rooms she occupied became fewer. Eventually, she confined herself to a single space, a single window, a single chair. Still, she waited. Still, she watched.

Each segment of the voice’s speech ends with a brief command: “Time she stopped.” At these moments, the rocking ceases. Silence settles. The woman sits motionless, suspended between thought and extinction. Then, after a pause, the voice resumes, and the chair begins again, as if memory itself has pressed the button to continue.

As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the woman being described is the woman in the chair. The distinction between narrator and subject dissolves. The voice is her mind replaying its own history, its own disappointment, its own endless vigil. Life, for her, has not been lived outwardly but endured inwardly—measured not by events but by waiting.

The voice grows quieter, slower, more deliberate. The sentences shorten. Hope is no longer even attempted. The search for others has ended. Now there is only the self, folded inward, rocking gently toward final stillness.

At last, the voice reaches its final repetition: “Time she stopped.” This time, the chair stops for good. The rocking ends. The voice falls silent. The woman remains seated, unmoving, as though the boundary between life and death has finally been crossed—or erased altogether.

The stage is left in darkness, with no clear confirmation of death, only the absence of motion, sound, and expectation. The waiting has ended not with fulfillment, but with quiet extinction.