?What is The Word

“Be all and end all”—Samuel Beckett’s dying words—can bring listeners life uncertainty. Shakespeare coined this phrase on Macbeth’s tongue. Beckett wanted to show that people live their lives however they want, but death is one, and truth can only be found by tasting dispersal. Beckett’s unparalleled prose and poetry conveyed his affective theories about life to readers and critics. In his theatre of the absurd and trilogy, he stressed life’s absurdity. “What is The Word” was Beckett’s final poem. This unclear poem can be interpreted, but not understood. The words are unconsolidated, and the rhyme sounds like a child wrote the poem. The words repeat in falling lines; the visions deteriorate; nothing is clear. Even the poem was read strangely.

Let me discuss two possible analyses of this poem that are not based on any other critic or reference. As we know, all of these analyses are interpretations and not translations of the author’s intent. Yes, exactly like the pyramid of life, when a child is born, he learns how to form words to communicate with his society, but he sometimes is unable to form or pick up the word he wants to convey what he feels or sees from a particular angle because he knows little about this world. As he ascends, he becomes more experienced and familiar with a lot of life’s truths. The base? The base from which man ascended. This is death. At the base, people come from death to life and return to death. Thus, this poem may be the dementia of an 83-year-old man living in a 3-year-old’s mind! Or his overwhelming sense of life’s absurdity! In terms of structure and rhythm, Beckett’s poem accretes phrases rhythmically to convey the specificity of overcoming verbal paralysis and the generality of mortality. 

By reaching ‘this,’ it may imply a person or thing will follow. Maybe absurdity can create an unrecognisable work! Consider the other possibility that this unidentified work is inadvertent Nescience. Does it mean everything we learn is nothing? Do age-old truths and experiences fail to help us express our feelings in a given situation? I think it’s natural to receive a final work from an artist who introduced society to unique ideas and theories. An ambiguous, crafty poem can end his overflow of thoughts for future generations, as we saw in Malone Dies after Beckett’s death.