The Narration of the Body and Salvationary Self-wanted Suffering in the Characters of Samuel Beckett's Works Based on Cartesian Duality

Abaspour, Amin; Nasri, Amir

doi:10.22054/wph.2022.68779.2086

The Narration of the Body and Salvationary Self-wanted Suffering in the Characters of Samuel Beckett's Works Based on Cartesian Duality

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Amin Abaspour ¹

Amir Nasri ²

¹ Ph.D Student in Philosophy of Art, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

² Associate Professor of Philosophy of Art, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22054/wph.2022.68779.2086

Abstract

If the investigation of different methods of existence and surveying language capabilities were among the most important thought issues of Samuel Beckett, so he would certainly use these two in order to recognize man better and communicate with the world around him. Beckett, affected by Descartes’ Dualism, believes that the intrinsic separation of body and soul has resulted in the incapability of man’s language to communicate with the world around him. So, he tries to show that there is no way to resolve his inability of communicating rather than creating a new language to narrate himself by his separated body from soul. Beckett uses body, its parts and motions to do this. He believes that the more decrepit the body is, the more obvious its effort to be seen. In order to do this, he tries to use characters with different kinds of inabilities in their bodies. In Beckett’s view, body can remove the obstacles of communication by narrating its defects. Therefore, the characters in his writings never speak about their calamitous situation and they are used to their inabilities as a permanent companion that it seems there is no sign of self-suffering in their behavior and motions. Being with these sufferings to the end of their explorations makes them self-conscious and at the same time to go beyond their decrepit bodies. Critical-analytical method has been used in this article and the result shows that Samuel Beckett goes beyond Descartes' Dualism and tries to restore the place and value of body.

Keywords

Samuel Beckett

Descartes’ Dualism

Body Narration

Self-wanted suffering

Salvation

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