“‘Idle Talk, Idle Talk, Idle Talk’: Samuel Beckett, Anglo-Ireland, and Heideggerian Thought”

Abstract

This essay analyses Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy and Waiting for Godot through the enabling theoretical lens of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. Special attention shall be paid to key Heideggerian concepts: idle talk, authenticity, and inauthenticity. A Heideggerian reading of Beckett’s influential middle period allows for a rich exploration of how his works provide a vision of the psychological state of the formerly powerful Anglo-Irish in post-independence Ireland. A Beckettian reading of Heidegger demonstrates how Heideggerian thought has been at the forefront of elucidating key challenges posed in the Twentieth Century concerning ways of being-in-the-world and being-with-others that allows for the authenticity of individual subjectivities.