Eh Joe (1965) by Samuel Beckett (Key Facts)

 

Eh Joe (1965)

by Samuel Beckett

(Key Facts) 

Key Facts of Eh Joe (1965) by Samuel Beckett

 

Full Title:

Eh Joe

 

Author:

Samuel Beckett

 

Type of Work:

Television play / television drama (monodrama)

 

Genre:

Modernist drama; Absurdist and psychological drama

 

Language:

English

 

Time and Place Written:

Written in the early 1960s, primarily in Paris, where Beckett lived and worked during this period. The play reflects his late experimental phase focused on television and interior consciousness.

 

Date of First Publication:

1965

 

Publisher:

Originally published by Faber and Faber (UK) and Grove Press (US), which regularly published Beckett’s dramatic works.

 

Tone

Bleak, intimate, accusatory, psychologically oppressive, and haunting. The tone is restrained rather than emotional, intensifying the sense of moral inevitability.

 

Setting (Time): An unspecified present; time is psychologically suspended rather than historically fixed.

 

Setting (Place): A small, bare, enclosed room—likely Joe’s living space—serving as a symbolic mental enclosure.

 

Protagonist

Joe — a silent, isolated man attempting to escape his past and suppress his conscience.

 

Major Conflict

Joe’s internal conflict between his desire for emotional withdrawal and control versus the inescapable return of guilt and memory, embodied by the Woman’s Voice.

 

Rising Action:

Joe enters the room and carefully secures it by checking the door and window, attempting to ensure total isolation. The Woman’s Voice begins speaking, recounting Joe’s past emotional cruelty and abandoned relationships. With each return of the voice, the camera moves closer, increasing psychological pressure.

 

Climax:

The Voice reveals that Joe’s suffering is self-inflicted—that his punishment does not come from others but from his own mind and conscience. At this point, Joe’s illusion of control fully collapses.

 

Falling Action:

The Voice fades, not as a resolution, but as an indication that it will continue to exist within Joe. Joe remains seated, silent, and trapped in psychological confinement.

 

Themes:

Inescapable guilt

Memory as psychological torment

Isolation and emotional withdrawal

Illusion of control

Self-judgment and internal punishment

Moral responsibility without redemption

 

Motifs:

Silence

Stillness and immobility

Disembodied voice

Repetition

Gradual visual narrowing (camera movement)

 

Symbols:

The Room: Joe’s mind; isolation as prison

Door and Window: Failed barriers against conscience

Silence: Emotional repression and denial

The Woman’s Voice: Memory, guilt, and conscience

Camera Close-ups: Psychological exposure and shrinking inner space

 

Foreshadowing:

Joe’s obsessive inspection and locking of the room foreshadow the futility of his attempt to escape intrusion. His reliance on silence and isolation anticipates the dominance of the Woman’s Voice, suggesting from the outset that internal judgment cannot be shut out.