Riddle-Character in Carroll and Beckett

We have recently noticed a strange affinity between Lewis Carroll and Samuel Beckett that should be brought to view. Interestingly, the two reveal new insights surrounding the riddle-character that we have spent much time researching. In particular, we should turn our attention to the chapter of Alice in Wonderland titled, “A Mad Tea-Party”, as well as to Beckett’s Endgame. The Hatter, the March-Hare, and the Dormouse occupy the same space of non-sense as Hamm and Clov. This can be seen clearly when Alice is first introduced to the three, as they are seated squished together at the end of a long table, and when Alice approaches to sit, they all cry “no room!” The March Hare then offers some wine, and when Alice replies that she does not see any, the Hare replies that there is no wine. Any statement is almost instantly refuted, no statement has any form of ground or can hold itself. This leads to situations where characters’ statements completely short-circuited and stop any kind of rhythm that is usually expected from speech, like when Alice interrupts the Dormouse. In other words, the trio, like many of the other characters in Wonderland, are entirely irrational. The exact same is the case for Beckett’s characters. We find that Beckett, more than anyone else, entirely reinvigorates Kafka’s literary project (as if it needed a reinvigoration at all). Adorno clearly sees this in “Trying to Understand Endgame". But, where we differ from Adorno is that Beckett also reinvigorates Kafka’s humor. When Benjamin writes that the most important part of Kafka to understand is his humor, this might be even more the case with Beckett. This point can be made the most clear in our juxtaposition between Endgame and Alice. To be clear, when we reemphasize Benjamin and Deleuze’s point regarding Kafka’s humor and apply it to Beckett, we do not wish to arrogantly claim that there is no negativity to be found in Beckett’s work. Rather, if we ignore the role of humor in Beckett or pigeonhole any humor into just another expression of the most dismal, the most negative, we are missing something profound about his work. If we were to make these mistakes, it is because we enter into Beckett (or Carroll) with a pre-established notion of common sense that we dogmatically stick to. Beckett and Carroll share the goal of obliterating this notion of common-sense, rather than reminiscing upon a nostalgia for a lost sense like reactionaries. They show that negativity is the result of common-sense thought. In fact, for Beckett, common-sense thought is exactly that which leads to the destruction of nature. Three moments in Endgame show this particularly well. Clov, very early on, states, “all life long the same questions, the same answers” (3). The paradox here is that a life with no new questions is not a life at all. It is the opposite of Deleuze’s analysis of Ikuru, where life is perpetuated through new forms of questions. Common-sense thought, which makes itself comfortable within dialectics rather than renouncing it, finds itself trapped in hell. Dialectics leads to the horrible repetition of the same questions and answers. But the potential escape from this hell lies in the non-sense of Hamm and Clov, their humor in particular. At one point, Clov begins pacing back and forth, to which Hamm asks what is going on. Clov stops and says “Ah!”, as if he had an idea, to which Hamm replies, “what a brain!” (26). We could easily see this same interaction occurring between any of the fantastical characters in Wonderland. In one of Hamm’s monologues, he suddenly imagines a “rational being” and proceeds to speak in the “voice of a rational being”, saying, “ah good, now I see what it is, yes, now I understand what they’re at!” (19). This deterritorialization of common-sense through mimicry or play then immediately triggers a new deterritorialization, as Clov “drops the telescope and begins to scratch at his belly with both hands” (19). In Beckett’s world of complete non-sense, any semblance of rationality immediately triggers what common-sense would find irrational, the becoming-animal of Clov. Most importantly, Hamm’s impression is absolutely hilarious, and Clov’s accelerating deterritorialization now doubles this initial humor. Similarly, the trio at the tea-party also redoubles an initial deterritorialization, when Alice inverts the Hare’s note that “you should say what you mean”, the trio then each multiplies a new rendition of the same initial inversion. So in Carroll and Beckett, an initial deterritorialization of speech causes a chain-reaction of new deterritorializations, or lines of flight.

While Alice originally feels discomfort at the non-sense of the trio at the tea-party, after the Hatter asks, “why is a raven like a writing-desk?” Alice feels a sense of relief and states, “I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles” (60). There are two important endnotes at this moment. First, Carroll wrote that his original conception of the riddle “had no answer at all” (311). We see that the Hatter, after a slight detour, asks Alice if she has a guess for the riddle, and then he and the Hare admit they “haven’t the slightest idea” to the answer. Alice then wearily replies, “I think you might do something better with the time [...] than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers” (62-3). Second, it is noted that Carroll’s “letters to girl correspondents are literally riddled with riddles” (311). Let us consider these two endnotes in detail.

In the first case, we must return to the basics with regards to the concept of the riddle. Traditionally, the riddle is said to contain its solution within the question that is posed. Alice is relieved at the prospect of a riddle because as soon as the trio’s actions are posed in the form of a question a potential answer is introduced. This brings the prospect of sense into the madness of the tea-party. But Carroll absolutely flips what is expected from the riddle-character on its head. In short, as soon as we introduce the virtual world of Wonderland, the riddle-character is no longer dialectical. It is not about an answer to a mere question. Instead, Carroll reveals that the virtual element of the riddle-character is none other than play. This was always embedded virtually within the riddle-character, even back to Oedipus. In other words, Carroll shows that the riddle character is not merely solved and then vanishes in a reconciled world, but instead it actualizes its virtual element which seems to primarily be play. The riddle stays, but there is no longer any answer, so the positing of questions becomes like Nietzsche’s dice roll where the questions affirm themselves each time they are posited, without needing an answer. So philosophy becomes an entirely creative act, and the core of this is only through the riddle character itself. Alice is too stuck within common-sense, she has not yet learned how to think, what thought is, in comparison to the trio. Alice, confused and about to interject to the Dormouse with some common-sense, states, “I don’t think” and is cut off by the Hatter who says, “then you shouldn’t talk” which strikes Alice as the limit of how much non-sense she can handle. She then leaves the “rudeness" of the trio (67). The partial statement of Alice is affirmed as truth by the Hatter: those with common-sense have not yet earned the right to speech.

In the second case, we return to the question of multiplication we observed earlier. When the riddle-character actualizes its virtual element, it deterritorializes itself. This is a fundamental quality of any question — a question is a deterritorialization. Whereas the dialectical question seeks its answer just as the riddle does, the virtual element of the question seeks its own deterritorialization, or multiplication across various assemblages. The virtuality of questions takes on a transversal quality. There is a reason that Carroll writes in riddles to girl correspondents in particular. It is because there is a fundamental element of multiplication, of the pack, within girlhood. Take, for instance, the group of girls at Balbec in Proust’s In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, or the pack of girls outside Titorelli’s studio in Kafka’s Trial. It is as if the riddle multiplies itself through the medium of the group of girls (and as Freud pointed to, femininity has always served as a riddle, just not the traditional riddle requiring a solution that he had in mind). If the question of the riddle is the roll of the dice, the affirmation of the question itself seeks to render itself infinite, and therefore, eternal. This is pointed toward in the new form of speech that Carroll invents.

It is no coincidence then that time is frozen, rendered infinite, at the tea-party. But before this, the Hatter notes that one can establish a relationship with him (Time), so as to be able to play with time, make any time one desires. “You’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!” (63). As Marx points toward, the time of common-sense is that which serves only as a necessary representation for maximizing the efficiency of labor. It is the time of the punch-card, being “on the clock”. Time itself is subordinated to the demands of capitalist accumulation. But the temporal implication of the actualization of the riddle-character into the form of play is that time itself becomes play as well. Time no longer takes on a despotic form, one is never late. Interestingly, however, the mad tea-party is in a kind of time-crisis, since the Hatter’s song threatened to “kill time”, and ever since then time will not listen to the Hatter. The Hatter’s parody of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” initiates the timelessness of sleep, threatening to completely kill time, as the Dormouse repeats “twinkle twinkle” over and over again in its sleep, in a little black hole (64). It is as if the Hatter’s song deterritorializes its surroundings into a kind of repetition divorced from difference, a bad eternal return. What is important is that we do not get to see the playful version of time in action, we only hear of it from the Hatter. Carroll cannot present a directly utopian image, the mad tea-party remains condemned to madness, to a purgatory of arbitrary rules (no room!) and frozen time.

It is in this sense that we must return to Beckett, and the comparison between Carroll should be quite apparent by now. We can distinguish three properties of the riddle-character: its actualization as play, its element of madness or non-sense (the infinite), and the modified temporality carried with it (the eternal). While Beckett does not explicitly pose riddles in the sense of the Hatter, we can clearly see the three properties of the virtual element of the riddle-character at work in Endgame. More generally, Endgame reads like one big riddle.

Beginning with the element of play, there is a moment in which Clov, shortly after a very emotional speech by Nagg to his son Hamm, sees Hamm throw away his dog calling it a “dirty brute” in an act of fascistic violence. This initiates a becoming-child of Clov, as he begins to “pick up the objects lying on the ground” so as to set “things in order” (31). He then claims he will “clear everything away” and then begins “picking up again”. Clov then states, “I love order. It’s my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust”, to which Hamm acts as the disappointed, Oedipal father. Clov says “I’m doing my best to create a little order” to which Hamm orders “Drop it!”, destroying Clov’s act of play (31-2). In Endgame, play presents itself under the dialectic at a standstill. A virtual affirmation lies in the potential of Clov’s act of play, the ordering of the object, clearing them away, and restarting….

This paper is still a work in progress. Please return later