Like Proust’s Remembrance of things past, Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and Kafka’s Castle, Samuel Beckett’s trilogy stands as a monument to how devastating a transformation the tradition of the novel can be subjected to. These three Beckett novels which would (and do) stand alone perfectly well, combine in a tour-de-force which greatly enhances and compounds the impact of each of the separate volumes.
The basic unifying principle in this work of otherwise dauntingly chaotic and refractory content is that the three protagonists by which the novels are named are all successive (or else cyclical) reincarnations or recurrences of the same character. In the last volume this diversification of the narrative voice into “vice-existers” becomes explicit. Stylistically and as regards structure, the trilogy consciously exposes conventions of realist fiction by means of merciless parodies and...
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Citation: Davies, Paul. "Molloy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 January 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3532, accessed 09 June 2026.]
