In the Middle of Nowhere

Given that the condition of ‘mortal liveness’ was a greater cause for perplexity in Beckett’s writing than the notion of an afterlife, this essay considers evocations of a post-mortal state in The Unnamable and the three works of the later trilogy, Nohow On, as a continuum from the pre-natal state he claims to recall. The paintings of Jack B. Yeats, an acknowledged influence on Beckett, exhibit significant parallels in the evocation of figures whose tenuous presence in the landscape erases the boundary between shades and mortal beings.