Footfalls is another bit of avant garde, but seems more approachable than Eh, Joe. Either that or I'm becoming more accustomed to avant garde strangeness. I'm still struggling to pull together a coherent understanding of the play, but I'll make some notes about things I noticed.
The play has two characters. One is May, who spends the play pacing up and down a short strip on the stage and talking. The other is a "woman's voice" -- whose isn't specified. The lighting directions seem to indicate that the visual is focused on May's feet and her face is basically indistinct and in shadow. This seems appropriate given the title. May has grey hair and is dressed in grey. Greyness seems to be a recurring theme in Beckett's work.
The lighting directions start the play in darkness and bring up the lights after a chime sounds. At three points in the play, the lights go dark for a brief span before coming back up dimmer each time.
The speech in the play starts with a dialog between May and the voice. Next comes a monologue by the voice. Finally there is a monologue by May. Each section of speech overlaps the others and establishes parallels that create questions about who each character is and suggesting some curious resonances between sections.
Thoughts...
May's pacing is described as a "clearly audible rhythmic tread." This calls to mind the image of a metronome or a clock ticking away seconds. When May is pacing, time is passing. When she stands still, everything transpires in a single tick.
Perhaps the greyness is to reflect Beckett's view that everything is shades of grey. There is no real black or white -- or maybe that should be, there is no white since we frequently have blackness too, though one could argue that even the blackest black is still not truly black, just a very dark grey.
The lighting seems to be doing two things. First, it seems to be acting as a curtain of sorts, breaking the play into three "acts," though that may be a stretch of the theatrical term. Second, the fact that it is dimmer each time suggests that May is fading. Indeed, the final lights-up direction says there is "no trace of May" on the stage.
In the first act (I'm going to pretend it is legitimate to call the parts acts), the voice is May's mother who hears May calling "in [her] deep sleep." What is this sleep? Is it just plain old sleep? Or is it something else? Death is often paralleled to sleep. A coma might be likewise. Maybe it is a sleep of consciousness in the sense that we could say that someone who is present but isn't attentive is "asleep". If so, what is the thing to which the voice isn't attentive as it is clearly attentive to May's voice.
There is an inconsistency in the voice's second set of lines. The voice is (as best I can tell) supposed to be counting in sync with May's steps, but only counts to seven between turns. This is inconsistent because Beckett's directions say May's path is always nine steps.
May asks the voice/mother several questions -- would you like me to inject you again (with what?) change your position (is mother immobile?) etc. To each of these, the voice/mother responds affirmative (she would like them to be done) "but it is too soon." I don't know if this is significant or not, but this made me think of time oriented vs. event oriented societies. In time oriented societies, people say, "We'll do that at 1:00PM," and mean it. Whatever else is going on, we'll drop it and do this at 1:00PM. In event oriented societies people say, "We'll do that after we finish this," meaning maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe even next week. Of course, some people combine the two -- "I'll meet you after my class that ends at 5:45 PM" establishes both event and time constraints. Class may end early or late, but this is primarily time oriented because it establishes a narrow band of time in which something will happen. The point of all this is just to say that the voice/mother is very conscious of time and doing things at the proper time as opposed to doing them when she feels like doing them. She wants to be injected, but it isn't time. She wants to be cared for, but it isn't time. She is time-oriented. And let's not forget that May's pacing marks time in the play.
The lines in the middle of page 240 introduce the first clear parallel between May and the voice/mother. They establish the voice/mother to be about 90 which prompts the question, "So much?" from the voice. May, on the other hand is said to be "in [her] forties" and asks, "So little?" These parallels will continue to grow throughout the play. It's also worth noting that this first act of the play begins with May calling, "Mother. [Pause. No louder.] Mother. [Pause.]" to which the voice responds, "Yes, May." Followed by "Were you asleep?" The act concludes with "May. [Pause. No louder.] May." To which may responds, "Yes, Mother." "Will you never have done?"
Earlier in the first act, as the voice was counting May's steps, it ended each set of seven (which I thought should have been nine) with "wheel" to call the turn. At the end of the first act, the voice is asking May if she'll ever quit "revolving it all," emphasizing the theme of looping, circling, repeating that is first established by May's pacing and is carried through the parallels in speech identified above and later in the play.
In act two, the voice (still the voice of mother? some other voice?) begins, "I walk here now." We never see the speaker for the voice. There is no evidence that the speaker is walking -- or even there other than the sound of the voice. (This point will become important later in the act.) The voice begins a monologue, presumably about May since it refers to her standing and May is directed to be standing still at one end of her pacing path at the beginning of the act. Remember that this suggests the first part of the voice's monologue is happening in a single tick of time.
The voice says May is pacing "in the old home … where she began." This made me think of some of the protagonists in the first four Beckett stories we read. For example, in both "First Love" and "The Expelled" the protagonists lived in their family homes until they were thrown out. In fact, both had stayed in their room, rarely venturing out, until they were thrown out. May seems to echo this theme, only now it seems that the room is more in her head than some physical place. (Maybe this suggests that the rooms in the first stories were the protagonists' heads.)
The voice says that May has been here pacing for a very long time, even "when other girls her age were out at… lacrosse…". Why lacrosse? I'm wondering if May is autistic or mentally handicapped or perhaps severely obsessive/compulsive. Beckett doesn't really talk in those terms and see discussion of voice/mother's consciousness above, but it's an interesting thought. Is May somehow mentally different than much of the rest of the world, turned so inward that she cannot function in the world at large? This could be supported by the idea that May doesn't really sleep -- or does so rarely and on her feet.
In the last half of the voice's monologue, we get a story about a dialog between a child named May (presumably the May of the play) and her mother (presumably the voice, though the voice doesn't identify itself as the mother in this act). The interesting thing is when May says that "motion alone is not enough, I must hear the feet, however faint they fall." This leads to someone removing the carpet from the floor so May can hear her footfalls as she paces. But let's go back to the need to hear the feet. This seems to echo Berkeley's philosophy that being is in being seen, only with the sense of hearing instead of sight. In this play, being isn't being seen, it is being heard. Which harks back to the earlier comment I made about the voice. We never see the speaker, but because we hear the voice, we know the speaker exists. Also, it is reinforced by the lighting directions which make May barely visible to begin with and increasing less visible with each light cycle. Being is being heard.
Along this line of thought, note that while May needs to hear her steps, she only speaks "when she fancies none can hear." May is defining her own existence and does not want others to do so for her. Also, when she speaks she "tries to tell how it was," defining her past as well as confirming her present existence by the sound of her voice. Also note that she "tries," doesn't necessarily succeed.
The third act is May's monologue. May begins with "Sequel." This is a little curious, but as we progress, we can see that May's monologue might be related to the story in the voice's monologue. In this section, though, the distinction between May and the voice becomes a little less certain. May talks about someone, presumably herself. Presumably we're hearing her "try[ing] to tell how it was."
There was a turn of phrase in the first part of May's monologue that I found interesting. "Some nights, she would halt, as one frozen by some shudder of the mind, and stand stark still till she could move again." I can't exactly say why, but the shudder of the mind is an interesting image for me. Also, when she stopped, the stop was involuntary. She had to wait until she could (was able) to move again.
Also in this monologue, there are references to her walking along "his poor arm" -- twice. I'm curious whose arm it is. She's in the church when she's walking. Perhaps this is a reference to Christ on the cross since many Catholic churches are laid out in cross-patterns Also, she somehow got into the church even though the door was "always locked at that hour," which makes me wonder how she got in. Did she walk through the wall? Is May a ghost?
At about the middle of the first half of her monologue may describes the pacer as "Grey rather than white, a pale shade of grey." This echoes the grey theme mentioned earlier. The use of "shade" also takes on a possible second meaning as we struggle to understand how May got through a locked door. Is it saying she is a ghost -- a grey ghost, not a white ghost?
Near the middle of the monologue, she talks about seasons and Vespers. May then begins to talk about Mrs. Winter (whose name is a season) talking to her daughter Amy (whose name is an anagram of May) about what she observed at Evensong (the Anglican name for Vespers). It seems there is a definite tie here to May going to the locked church and pacing along "his poor arm" "at certain seasons of the year, during Vespers." I'm just not sure what. Also, Is May Amy? Is this name change like Lulu/Anna in "First Love"? Is there an intentional relationship between Mrs. Winter (on a late autumn evening) and her daughter May (late spring)? It seems that there is a definite relationship, but it isn't clear. For one thing, the brief description we have of Amy implies that she is functioning in the world, talking to her mother, sitting down to dinner, arguably going to Evensong, not pacing a rut in the floor.
May's story tells of Mrs. Winter asking Amy if she observed anything strange at Evensong, to which Amy replies "I was not there." Mrs. Winter asserts that she must have been because "I heard you respond. I heard you say Amen." This is looping back to the being is being heard idea. Mrs. Winter is convinced she heard Amy, which certifies Amy's presence, but Amy insists she was not there. Amy never responds to her mother's assertion.
The final lines of May's monologue are Mrs. Winter speaking to Amy, echoing the voice/mother's words to May at the end of the first act. "Amy. [Pause. No louder.] Amy. [Pause.] Yes, Mother. [Pause.] Will you never have done? [etc.]" The play has looped around itself again.
I'm still not certain exactly what to make of this play. The themes seem to be about repetition and circularity, being is being heard (in contrast to being seen), and uncertainty of identity and existence, but I haven't managed to tie them all together yet into a clear picture in my head.
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