The Carnivalesque – Grotesque in Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies

In the absence of God and language as the ultimate authorities, what choices are left for human beings? This is probably the most profound question Samuel Beckett poses in his so-called Trilogy, the major non-dramatic work which is often considered as his microcosmic world, with Malone Dies (1951) at the heart of it. The present paper focuses on the second part of Beckett’s Trilogy, Malone Dies, from a carnivalesque-grotesque perspective to discuss themes of becoming and identity, degradation, and language. In the carnivalistic world of this novel, the fluid identity of the characters transgresses the boundaries that separate the individual from the communal in the process of becoming. Beckett portrays a failing body and a failing language that challenge and degrade the authority of God and language to offer us new possibilities beyond the faults of an ailing system.