Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett
"Malone Dies" is a novel by Samuel Beckett that explores themes of existence, memory, and the interplay between reality and fiction. The story centers on Malone, an elderly man confined to a hospital bed, who reflects on his life while writing a narrative about a character named Saposcat, later renamed Macmann. As Malone writes, he grapples with his unreliable memory, blurring the lines between his own experiences and those of his fictional protagonist. The narrative shifts between Malone's thoughts, his possessions, and the surreal experiences of Macmann, who finds himself in an asylum under the care of a caregiver named Moll.
Throughout the novel, Malone's introspections reveal his feelings of isolation and existential doubt, questioning his own existence and the nature of life and death. The text is characterized by its fragmented structure and dark humor, challenging readers to consider the significance of memory and the act of storytelling in the face of mortality. As Malone's narrative unfolds, it becomes a poignant meditation on the human condition, showcasing Beckett's unique style and literary prowess. "Malone Dies" is often regarded as a significant work in the context of modernist literature, inviting readers to engage deeply with its profound themes.
Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett
First published:Malone meurt, 1951 (English translation, 1956)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Absurdist
Time of plot: 1940s
Locale: A hospital
Principal Characters
Malone , a dying old manSaposcat/Macmann , the protagonist of a story Malone tellsMoll andLemuel , other characters in Malone’s story
The Story
Malone, an old man, is sitting in a hospital bed and is writing. He hears the sounds of other men coming and going. He then recalls having been brought to the hospital in an ambulance. He is bedridden, almost incapable of movement. His memory is unreliable; he does not know whether he is recalling memories or inventing them. Then, abruptly, he begins to write a story about a man named Saposcat. “I wonder if I am not talking yet again about myself,” he muses. A page later, however, Malone notes, “Nothing is less like me than this patient, reasonable child.”
A family, the Lamberts, have befriended Saposcat, who lives on a farm. Saposcat, known by the nickname of Sapo, helps Mr. Lambert bury a mule. Incest, according to Malone, is in the air in the Lambert home. The Lambert children, a girl and a boy, share a bedroom and masturbate in each other’s presence.
Malone drops his pencil, and it takes him forty-eight hours to recover it. He says he has spent two unforgettable days of which nothing will ever be known. The pencil is described at some length. It is getting shorter all the time and soon will vanish from wear and tear. Malone is not worried, for he remembers that somewhere in his bed he has another pencil, scarcely used.
Encountering again the protagonist of his story, Malone changes the name from Saposcat to Macmann. Macmann, caught in a rainstorm, decides to lie flat on the ground, so that at least some portion of himself will stay dry. As the rain continues with unabated violence, Macmann rolls over and over, until he begins to dream of becoming a cylinder and never having to walk upright again.
Malone then interrupts himself to begin an inventory of his possessions. He speaks of the pleasure he used to take in putting his hands deep into his pockets and fingering the “hard shapely” objects that were there and how he loved to fall asleep holding a stone, a horse chestnut, or a cone in his hand.
He interrupts himself once more—or is interrupted by memory—with the thought of Macmann, and Malone says that it looks like he will never finish anything “except perhaps breathing.” Malone wonders whether he has died already. No doubt feeling that they will constitute a proof of his continued existence, he imagines taking all of his possessions into the bed with him—his photograph, his stone, his hat, and his buttons.
Malone then wonders if he is hungry. He writes, “I would gladly eat a little soup, if there was any left. No, even if there was some left I would not eat it.” He gives no reason for this change of heart.
Having previously lost (and then painstakingly retrieved) his exercise book and his pencil, Malone now loses his stick. Only now does he realize how much it means to him. Rapidly, however, his thoughts return to food. He wonders if the hospital workers feed him while he sleeps, or if they withhold soup from him to help him die more quickly. He thinks that it would have been quicker to poison him and wonders if they fear an autopsy. He then recalls that he has some pills, but he is not sure what they are for. They are either sedatives or laxatives. It would be annoying, he says, to turn to them for calm and to get diarrhea instead. He admits he could be calmer, but adds “enough about me.”
One day, much later, Macmann awakes in an asylum, the House of Saint John of God. The person who tells him this is a Christlike figure, who hands Macmann the stump of a pencil, requesting that Macmann sign himself into the hospital. He and his attendants leave, and a small, ugly old woman called Moll takes a chair by his bed. For earrings she wears two long ivory crucifixes. She turns out to be the person charged with his care. She keeps bringing him food, emptying his chamberpot, and helping him wash himself. When Macmann one day notices his clothes are gone, Moll calms him.
Macmann and Moll become lovers. Moll writes him love letters. In return, Macmann writes little love poems, “remarkable for their exaltation of love regarded as a kind of lethal glue.” Another kind of writing is done by Lemuel, an attendant, who dutifully notes Macmann’s questions in a thick book but does not return with answers.
Malone interrupts himself to report on a visit from a person unknown to him, who had hit him on the head and subsequently scattered his things. This person is malevolent, a characteristic later attributed to Lemuel. He supposes this visitor might be a mourner or a mortician, and himself dead already. Malone makes a list of things to say to him. He is cut short by violent symptoms, perhaps fatal ones. His account becomes even more confused.
The story of Macmann is then resumed with much coherence. The story of his attempted escapes is recounted; he is always thwarted because he hides in the same place each time. From one of these escapades, he fetches back a stick. When Lemuel finds it, he has him beaten with it.
Malone concludes with an account of an excursion from the asylum on which Macmann is taken, along with fellow inmates. The account, however, fails to conclude, presumably because of the death of its creator, Malone.
Bibliography
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