The Murphy Murder Mystery: An Irish “post-mortem situation”

Abstract

This paper will propose that Beckett’s affinity for crime and mystery fiction also contributes to Murphy. The novel will be examined on the proposed hypothesis that Murphy’s death, so-called, is conspicuously left ambiguous to a certain degree, rendering it a type of mystery narrative. Approaching the mysterious death as something like a detective fiction “cold case”, the events of Murphy, and clues left by Beckett throughout the prose that follows, I will investigate whether or not Murphy does actually die toward the end of the book. Although Beckett does not present these aspects in the traditional form of “thriller” fiction, he does use them to create a modernist aesthetic which challenges traditions, identifications of being, identity, representation and space regarding both the individual and the social context of the Irish “postmortem situation” depicted in Murphy.