"Body Without Organs":The Body Aesthetics In Happy Days

Samuel Beckett has always practiced a thorough spirit of innovation in artistic creation.The incoherent plot,the fragmented bodies,the simple language,and the slow movements exhibited in his works contribute to the unique Beckettian style.In recent years,the interpretation of Samuel Beckett’s works has gradually developed from being confined to existentialism,absurdity and alienation to the interpretation of more dimensions.While the dimension of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s philosophy,which correspond highly with Beckett’s works,has not been paid enough attention by Chinese academe.Against this background,this thesis probes into the body aesthetics in Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days with the application of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concept of the “Body without Organs”(Bw O)to search the fluidity of the characters’ bodies that wean from the restriction of the organism.This thesis consists of three body chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion.The introductory part provides an introduction to Samuel Beckett and his famous plays,an introduction to Happy Days,literature review,theoretical bases of the reading and significance of the study.Chapter one discusses that the body is constrained by the organism and presents the body in repression and captivity.Chapter two expounds the body’s escaping the organism and attempting to be the body without organs.Chapter three explains the body’s final state of fluidity,in which the body are disappearing and constantly becoming-otherness,hence the body is endowed with special aesthetic implications.The conclusion reviews the above viewpoints on the “Body without Organs” and proposes the relationship between the fragmented capitalistic world since the Second World War and body-deconstruction.