Is Beckett's Island Dystopia(n) or not?

Todorović, Predrag (2020) Is Beckett's Island Dystopia(n) or not? Tekstualia, Islands and Laboratories, 60 (2). pp. 51-64. ISSN 1734-6029

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Abstract

The literary genre of dystopia remains popular in the English-speaking world, particularly in young adult fiction. The word “dystopia” is a nineteenth century English neologism formed upon the logic of Thomas More’s utopia. Dystopia denotes a physical “bad place”, and a metaphysical “negative space”. In Malone Dies the novel’s final scene is happening on an island or “islet”, as Beckett wrote. What unfolds is a scene of horror, a slaughter committed by guardian Lemuel. The islet thus becomes Böcklin’s “Isle of the Dead” (bad place), and Lemuel the boatman Charon who ferried souls to the underworld in Greek mythology. Endgame is set in a post-apocalyptic world, and everything is happening in a kind of bunker-shelter. Outside there is, probably, nothing. Or, maybe, only Death, as Hamm says. Are they situated on an island or not? Are Hamm, Clov, Nagg and Nell the last survivors of an atomic war? A kind of Robinsons, lost on an island in the middle of a desert planet, like the lost boys in Golding’s Lord of the Flies? Beckett wrote some other works that can be considered dystopian, but in my paper I will focus on the two mentioned above, and try to analyze characters in those hostile landscapes, and their useless efforts to avoid the inevitable – the end.

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