The Story Archive

Molloy

Samuel Beckett · 1951 CE · Novel · English · Contemporary

A vagrant writes in his mother's room, trying to reconstruct how he came there — the bicycle, the crutches, the sixteen sucking-stones he shuffles between four pockets. In the second half an agent named Moran is sent out to find him and returns on foot, filthy and altered, filing a report whose first lines its last lines contradict. First of the three books Beckett wrote in French in a burst after the war.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalTragicomedy
Theme
Memory & TimeIdentity & SelfJourney & QuestExistential AbsurdityIsolation & Alienation
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
WandererAnti-HeroThe Double
Plot structure
Unreliable NarratorThe QuestCircular
Quest object (Greimas)
Identity / Selfhood
Symbol / motif
The JourneyThe ForestThe Stone
Conflict
vs Self
Mode / tone
AbsurdistModernistIronic
Culture / tradition
English

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