Images of motion in Samuel Beckett's novel ‘Murphy’ (1938)

The article focuses on the images connected with motion in S. Beckett’s novel Murphy (1938). During the period of writing the book, the author wanted to free himself from the influence of James Joyce and to develop his own conception. He chose a popular Irish name for his main hero and added to the portrait some details from his own biography. The protagonist of the novel, Murphy, is one of the typical Beckettian characters (Belacqua, Watt, Molloy, Malone), who realize the infinite distance between themselves and the outer world. They prefer staying isolated in the mental space of their own imagination and are indifferent to what is happening outside of it. Murphy is disgusted by endless cyclic processes that physical life consists of. He tries not to be involved in them. The impossibility of the complete indifference, on the one hand, and the protagonist’s obsession with self-contemplation, on the other hand, lead him to death. Biographical comments to the novel, made by famous literary critics, may be supplemented with observations on the specific nature of S. Beckett’s phenomenology and poetology, offered by scholars in recent years. Based on the phenomenological analysis, the article aims to discover how the images of motion are engaged in the process of revealing Murphy’s inner conflict. Among the elements of Beckett’s conception, we can single out the ‘big world’ and the ‘small world’, which are filled with different spatial images and images of objects. The plot of the novel is connected with Murphy’s conscious efforts to interact with specific moving objects for obtaining corporal calmness, giving him freedom of staying in his mental world. Significant characteristics of the motion images in the novel are the following: controlled and uncontrollable cyclicity, desirable immobility, and destroying chaotic nature.