The Motif of Quest in Stories and Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett

• Thesis title in Czech: Motiv cesty a hledání ve Stories and Texts for Nothing Samuela Becketta
• Thesis title in English: The Motif of Quest in Stories and Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2012/2013
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Ondřej Pilný, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 04.09.2013
• Date of assignment: 04.09.2013
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 13.09.2013
• Date and time of defence: 11.09.2017 00:00
• Submitted/finalized: no

Guidelines

I. Goals in general: The thesis aims to explore Samuel Beckett’s use and modification of the traditional concept of quest in Stories and Texts for Nothing. This thesis will try to show that the collection can be seen as a transition from quest narratives, where the journey functions as the main narrative structure, to works placed in spatial and often also temporal stasis where any progress and movement becomes impossible. This should be done in context of other Beckett works, especially the Trilogy and Waiting for Godot.
These basic questions should be examined in the thesis:
How does their quest affect the protagonists? How do they move? Where do they move? Whom do they meet? What are they like? Why do they move?
W. H. Auden claims quest narrative shows one’s inner choices that are otherwise invisible. Do Beckett’s characters really have a choice? Are they Everyman characters?
II. Stories: Beckett depicts old men who are deprived of their safe shelters and forced to travel the world; this city/road structure is the essence of quest narrative. The world they travel is in a way fascinating, just like fantastic landscapes of epics and fairy tales. The heroes of these narratives are not strong and single-minded, but old (even their ability to move is limited) and indecisive; often the nature of a quest is hidden and choices not made, the protagonist is rather taken by events. Besides a main quest for stasis (or self; or death) which is fully possible only outside the text, they have smaller missions: one of them is symbolised by a hat; a social quest that failed.
i. The Expelled: The narrator travels through a city of his birth, yet unknown to him. He moves without telling his goal or in a number of smaller missions which turn into failures and nonsense, such as the journey to the Zoo. He gains a helpful companion, a cabman, whom he starts to despise and finally leaves in order to continue in his journey alone. As the narrator says, he attempts a quest for self.
ii. The Calmative: This story is closest to Texts for Nothing in that it is most conscious of itself as a mere calmative, but also in that as a whole it is a quest for composure, but within itself it has a second level of quest, a structure based on traditional narratives. This calmative story is unreal, told simply to ease the narrator, who is dead, yet here he imagines a journey through various places, most prominently a city. In the end he remembers an old adventure story and more or less succeeds in calming himself down. There are several quest encounters and tests.
iii. The End: An old man is expelled and given some money and clothes (knight’s equipment?) to start his life anew. He makes some effort to follow this mission, but upon its completion he loses all motivation for activity. He moves from shelter to shelter, losing them in turn. His industriousness reminds of Robinson Crusoe, yet there is no real improvement; the aesthetics is that of decline and decay. A quest narrative features a return; here the return is to stasis of a closed boat and, finally, death.
III. Texts for Nothing: These follow the path begun in The Calmative. As a whole they are usually a (failed) quest for identity or for voice, while in their structure they contain samples of traditional quest narratives; their structure is too fragmented on one hand and too static on the other to use the firm and consistent structure of a quest narrative as its defining frame. It is no longer possible to speak of characters as they would be too consistent. Movement happens “in the skull”; the voice is alone, helpless, even unreal. The thesis should also touch upon the subject of “quest for nothingness”.

References

Ackerley, C. J., and S. E. Gontarski, eds. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 2004.
Auden, W. H. “The Quest Hero”. Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Eds. Neil D Isaacs, Rose A Zimbardo. Notre Dame, IN: University Press, 1968. 40-61.
Baldwin, Helene. Samuel Beckett’s Real Silence. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981.
Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Short Prose. Ed. S. E. Gontarski. New York: Grove Press, 1995.
Cohn, Ruby. A Beckett Canon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.
Esslin, Martin, ed. Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs : Prentice Hall, 1987.
Gontarski, S. E. The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. Damned to Fame. The Life of Samuel Beckett. London: Bloomsbury, 1996.
Pilling, John, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Beckett. The Cambridge Companion to Beckett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Scarry, Elaine. Resisting Representation. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1994.
Weston, Jessie. From Ritual to Romance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.