Murphy’s Tragedy In Closed Systems In Murphy

Samuel Beckett is a famed Irish-French writer, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969 for his new style of novel and drama which presents man’s worries and sadness. Murphy is the first work with which Beckett was satisfied. Most critics have studied the novel from the perspective of feminism and psychoanalysis, and the analysis of the closed systems in Murphy is not adequate. This thesis analyzes Murphy’s tragedy in closed systems from the perspective of binary opposition. It focuses on Murphy’s split between body and mind, his painful struggles in the big and small worlds, and his tragic end. It explores how Murphy gradually goes to death for his split and the crash of the small world, which reveals the reasons for his tragedy and Beckett’s sense of tragedy.In introduction, the thesis discusses the meaning of the thesis title, gives the literature review at home and abroad, presents the theory, methods and basic ideas, and then introduces the structure and basic contents of the article. In the body, the thesis probes into the causes of the grotesqueness of Murphy’s behavior. According to the author, the reason is that Murphy’s mind and body are separated and closed systems with constant discordance between them. Such opposition between mind and body forces Murphy to escape from the body limitation and pursue the absolute freedom of his mind. Meanwhile, by analyzing Murphy’ s miserable struggles in the big and small worlds, the thesis presents how the mechanical big world doubles Murphy’ s survival and spiritual pressure, and how the third closed dark zone(the small world) enchants Murphy. Moreover, the thesis explores how the characters and environment of the big world affect Murphy, and how Murphy escapes to the madhouse. Actually, Murphy’s third dark zone is the mind destination that he seeks. But it eventually encounters failure.As the so-called only non-puppet in the novel, Murphy hates everything that belongs to the big world and refuses to receive it. Seeing his small world as the spiritual harbor, he insists on solipsism while going to death. He avoids the reality and the big world all the time, and pursues the absolute freedom of mind and the nothingness of the world by unrealistic ways. This thesis reaches such a conclusion: in S. Beckett’s mind, the big and small worlds are in binary opposition, which leaves humans no space to escape to.