Written immediately after the completion of Molloy, and finished in the summer of 1948, Malone Dies is the second novel in Beckett's "Trilogy."[1] Like Molloy, Malone Dies furthers Beckett’s project to "empty the novel of its usual recognizable objects—plot, situation, characters—and yet to keep the reader interested and moved."[2] Lacking much of Molloy's trace linearity or characteristic humor, with Malone Dies "we can hardly be sure of much more than that Malone, whoever he is, is dying and at the end is dead; the rest is nightmare."[2] As Gabriel Josipovici observes, whereas Molloy/Moran reflects on the past to write memoir, Malone will write "only of what is happening to him. If necessary, to pass the time, he will tell a few stories, but the anecdotes will only be aspects of the present."[1] In fact, Malone’s habit of beginning but then interrupting or abandoning his stories not only demonstrates the faulty fiction-making capacity of the mind, but reveals "its impotence as an instrument towards fulfillment."[3] Confined to bed, Malone's predicament reflects the Trilogy’s progressive restriction of locomotor freedom and the shift from an outer to an inner search,[3] not only for meaning, but for "a final letting go, a dying which is more than the cessation of breathing."[1]
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