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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. + 79 +
