Return in the Postwar Fiction

Abstract

After the Liberation of France, Beckett and Suzanne returned to Paris to find that their apartment had been occupied during their time in Roussillon, though it had not been ransacked or burglarized.1 Although the war was not completely over in early 1945, Beckett felt the need to return to Ireland to see his mother and brother. In the six years since Beckett had seen his mother, she had aged visibly and was now suffering from Parkinson’s disease. May Beckett had sold the Cooldrinagh during the war and built a small house for herself across the road. It was during this return home that he was to experience the now well-known revelation that he must work with impotence instead of excess. One could speculate that the elapsed time and the changed circumstances both inward and outward for Beckett contributed to his revelation in regard to his writing. The fact that the epiphany occurs upon his return to Ireland is momentous.