Malone dies

Malone dies is a novel of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), published in 1951.

In this second volume of the trilogy begun with Molloy and completed by Unnamable the , Beckett invites us to take, with him, a step moreover in the forfeiture of the man, of a man, who does not take any more name of Molloy, but of Malone. The bond between the two clear, is not only suggested. And at the bottom, which is essential the name?

This novel is thus written by Malone, grabataire dependant on an outside assistance, anonymity and invisible, which takes care of him summarily. From its bed, Malone awaits the end by laying down on its newspaper the thoughts which it estimates sufficiently supposed to be paid.

These bits of waiting (or life) are an alternation of reflections of Malone, which he entrusts to his newspaper, where he speaks mainly about his state, at the same time physical and psychological. Conversations with its reader, to which he explains his environment, its plans not to miss its exit, which he intends to put in scene by telling us three stories, that by a man, a woman and an inanimate object. Stories, therefore, which he invents and tells.

To furnish time, Malone convenes under our eyes the characters of Sapo child, at his place then at the Louis whom he visits regularly, then of Macmann, old man which one does not know the age very well, and who passes the major part of his account to St-Jean-of-God, asylum or to mouroir of which he is the boarder. The accounts of the woman and the stone are not explicitly given to us.

All these accounts are with the first nobody, as in Molloy , the questionings are the same ones (life, death, nonsense of the human condition, inadequacy in world etc…), and the style always so particular.

Citations resulting from Malone dies :

- To live and make live. More the sorrow to make the lawsuit with the words. They are not hollower than than they cart.

- Now it was not the first time that Macmann was rolled by ground, but it always had done it locomotive without back thought.

- When you hold me in your arms, and me you in mine ''

- the worn eyes of offenses are delayed cheap on all that they so lengthily requested, in the last, it true prayer finally, that which does not request anything.

(In a hackney carriage:) - And each one has its reasons, while wondering what they are worth, and if they are the good ones, to go where it goes rather than elsewhere, rather than nowhere, and the horse hardly more obscurely than the others ''

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