Engulfed By The Ubiquitous Loss:An Anatomy Of The Characters' Melancholia In Beckett's Plays

In Beckett's three full-evening plays,Waiting for Godot(1953),Endgame(1957)and Happy Days(1961),the ubiquitous grief and loss triggered by the issues of religion,scientific progress as well as the culture after World War ? haunts the main characters whose reactions to loss display melancholic qualities.Consequently,in light of the theory of melancholia and the related historical background,this paper not only attempts to investigate the characters' melancholic manifestations and their counter-melancholic ways in three plays,but also unveils the social and historical reasons behind the characters'melancholia.This paper is comprised of five parts.Chapter One begins with a sketch of a composite profile of Beckett and the scholarship on his corpus as well as a simple recapitulation about the theory of melancholia.Chapter Two investigates the impact,as demonstrated by Vladimir and Estragon's Freudian melancholic symptoms in Waiting for Godot,of the religious decline on humans as well as the futility of"self-questioning" as a counter-melancholic method.Taking Hamm in Endgame as the research subject,whose melancholic indulgence in the mechanical past wrecks not only his past,but also the future,Chapter Three not merely uncovers the dual damage that arises from the scientific progress to human's physical and mental state,but clarifies Hamm's means of "storytelling" only makes some compensations for his pain of some loss.Chapter Four,through Winnie's melancholic attachment to the Victorian cultural remainders in Happy Days,examines people's spiritual dilemma when confronted with the sweeping overthrow of Victorian value system in the early 60s.Besides,in the play,in spite of being caught in melancholia,Winnie's negative feelings get catharsis by resorting to "literary creation".Chapter five concludes the causes of the characters' melancholia are inextricably linked with the creating background of the three plays,which exposes Beckett's sustaining concern on people's spiritual state.Besides,the ways characters employ to resist melancholia offer a reference of the literary creation as a possible cure to melancholia.