An Irish born exile, Samuel Beckett with his experience of dislocation is well comparable with James Joyce, another expatriate Irish writer. Beckett`s most important distinction from the other stems from the often resolute expulsion of Irish contexts from his work. Despite the obsessional memories of Irish landscapes and sounds he cherished from his childhood, his repulsion for the ethos of Ireland results in a contradiction in the way he handles his Irish inheritance. This essay looks into Beckett`s complex ambivalence to Ireland reading his novels and plays, mainly, Murphy, "First Love¡±, and All That Fall. His critical sarcasm in Murphy and "First Love" targets the nationalist imperative in the postcolonial Ireland. Meanwhile, his unusual return to an Irish milieu based on his childhood experience in All That Fall mainly critiques the emotional repression of a Protestant Irish community. Whether it is the nationalist piety or the Irish theocracy under attack, Beckett`s Ireland as he represented it is an un-homey home or an unmotherly motherland. Never having abandoned his Irish nationality through nearly half a century of settlement in France, however, Beckett proves his quirky way of caring about Ireland, an ambivalent kind. |