"Close Your Eyes and Listen to It, What Would You Think It Was": The Uncanny and the Mechanical in All That Fall and Embers

Abstract

This paper aims at examining the aural dimension in Samuel Beckett's radio dramas: All That Fall and Embers. The study is divided into two major sections: the study of the ”uncanniness” in Beckett's radio dramas, and the mechanical voice. In the first section, I focus on Freud's uncanny in light of radio techniques in the dramas. I will discuss alienation as the major feature to see how Beckett toys with the limitation of reality with respect to radio technology. I will also seek to explore how repetition emitting from the radio dramas complies with the uncanny in the engagement of radio techniques. In section two, I will first uncover the cause of the uncanny of alienation and repetition as the result of traumatic experience. In this way, there is urgency for dominance from instances of uncontrollable events. Hence, I will foreground the mechanical control as Beckett's intention to use the radio. However, the impulse to pursue a sense of control is meant to falter in Beckett's radio dramas. Thus, I will strive to determine the significance of the struggle for a sense of control since it is destined to be lost. The purpose of the study is to explore how Beckett's experiment with radio opens up possibilities and potential of sounds and voices in presentation. The aim to deliver the mechanical control springs from the uncanny repression.