Sounds, Sense and Signature : Beckett’s Swerving Identity

Abstract

the essay investigates Beckett’s “particular exploitation of sounds” as they especially appear in the names “Hamm” and “Godot”,  and in the pun of the title of Whoroscope. By drawing on Beckett’s letters and by offering close readings of several passages,  Bizub convincingly establishes a connection between sounds and “signature” (drawing on Derrida) as a source of identity or of “the impossibility of any attempt at a precise definition of the character’s identity”