Worstward Ho. Beckett and narration

Abstract

This article focuses on the place Worstward Ho has in the artistic and philosophical project of Samuel Beckett. Seeing as Beckett strives for the acknowledgement that the only worthy aspiration is that of pure language which seeks to present the unrepresentable, Worstward Ho puts pure language in a realm that is disconnected from cultural and linguistic problems. When we consider Worstward Ho to be the book of “on” we can see it as the ultimate affirmation of Beckett’s philosophical impetus to go on through affirmation and negation towards that final truth where the affirmation/ negation dialectic breaks down and leads to where the possibility of the real is asserted in the unlessenable least, the word that cannot be presented. Perceptions fail because they are impermanent and unstable, whereas words divorced from them go on towards their true state. In this manner, Beckett locates his works in the fictional dimension of pure language.