Inaction as a Tool of Deconstruction: A Derridean Analysis of Beckett’s Godot and Melville’s Bartleby
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2024-06-15
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en
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This thesis offers a comparative analysis of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener through the lens of Derridean poststructuralism. The thesis provides insight into the main characters’ attitudes towards missing centres in their worlds, and explores the texts’ commentary on the human condition, particularly in a (post)modern world. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how inaction serves as a deconstructive tool against unfounded structures (such as authority, language or being), and how the main characters engage with the deconstruction of structures that are important to them. This is done by a comparative poststructuralist analysis of the works, by drawing on various theories and thinkers including Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze or Julia Kristeva. My thesis states that, by exposing the missing centres of structures, inaction deconstructs structures of meaning, action and identity, even if the characters go to extreme lengths at maintaining them.
Keywords: Samuel Beckett; Waiting for Godot (1954); Herman Melville; Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853); Jacques Derrida; inaction; poststructuralism
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