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SAMUEL BECKETT’S LEGACIES IN CARYL CHURCHILL’S LATER PLAYS
The title of this play, Escaped Alone, is taken from the epilogue of Herman
Melville’s Moby Dick," which guotes from the Book of Job: "I only am escaped
alone to tell thee," as seen in Churchills words of dedication. In Moby Dick,
this guotation suggests that Ishmael is the only survivor of the attack of a
white whale, whose mission is to narrate the story of Ahab, the captain of
the whaler he was on. The passage emphasizes the importance of passing on
knowledge of the apocalyptic disaster to posterity. Churchill’s four elderly
women, like the four messengers who one by one visit Job at the dinner with
his children and tell him “I only am escaped alone to tell thee,”'* disclose
problems that each one has within her mind. In a way, each of the women, as a
kind of survivor, has a trauma from her encounter with an unknown/partially
disclosed incident in the past. Their traumas, mostly expressed in the form
of an inner monologue, are exposed to the audience in the theater. Chris
Wiegand contends that their monologues are “written to be direct address
rather than soliloquies.”*° Hence, the audience are entrusted to pass on to
future generations the warnings of possible disaster in the future, as well as
the horror of the socio-political reality that has caused individual traumas.
Three of the four women in Escaped Alone, Sally, Vi and Lena, are friends
from the old days and they get together in Sally’s backyard for the first time
after along absence. The play is reminiscent of Beckett’s Come and Go, in which
some hidden secrets are not always shared by all three women but only by two
of them, and the audience simply understands through their minimalistic
exchanges that there is a terrible secret within each of them.?! The hidden
traumas that afflict each woman are revealed as the play progresses, but the
incident which caused the trauma is never clarified. It only becomes clear in
the case of Vi; she was imprisoned for her husband-killing. However, whether
it was a murder she intended or just self-defense is never known; Sally, who
happened to be an eye-witness of Vi’s murder, thinks that it was a murder,
which Lena and Vi herself deny. There is a tense moment when Sally mentions
it, but both Sally and Vi avoid spoiling the friendly atmosphere.
All four women suffer from some unknown but both internal and external
trauma. Thus, their tea gathering provides a temporary protection from their
mental pain. In a way, the backyard of Sally, who hosts the other women,
V Herman Melville: Moby-Dick, in Harrison Hayford — Hershel Parker (eds.): Moby-Dick: An
Authoritative Text Reviews and Letters by Melville Analogues and Sources Criticism, New
York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1967, 470.
18 Job 1:15, 1:16, 1:17, 1:19.
1 Job 1:13-1:19.
Chris Wiegand: Sunshine and terrible rage: Linda Bassett on Caryl Churchill’s Escaped
Alone, The Guardian, 10 February 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/feb/10/
linda-bassett-caryl-churchill-escaped-alone-royal-court (accessed 11 July 2016).
Churchill’s 2012 play, Love and Information, composed of many short scenes, starts with
a scene titled “The Secret,” in which one character asks another her secret, which, as in
Beckett’s Come and Go, is disclosed in a whisper to her companion but never to the audience.
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