"Form is content, content is form- (Segre 5). Beckett claims it would be ideal when form and content equal one another. According to him, Proust and Joyce have accomplished this goal. In his own works, there is a clear progression towards this final aim. His early novels show less identity between style and content. The style appears to be decorative. In his later novels, Beckett reduces the story line. The style becomes functional and grows in significance. "Beckett's style then becomes the body, the concretion of his message' - (Segre 7).
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In Beckett's trilogy "Molloy, Malone dies and the Unnamable- the style is very significant. He introduces many stylistic innovations. The traditional ideas about plot, setting, chronology and characterization are abandoned and replaced by new ones. As Rabinovitz says, the repetition often plays an important role in this process: the same underlying story determines the plot, the cyclical time scheme, the settings designed to evoke a déja-vu and recurring traits link the different characters (64).
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The repetitiousness of the prose increases as the novel progresses. The first impression is one of chaos and disorder, but the repetition in Beckett's trilogy is clearly part of a highly structured pattern. It ranges from the echoes of sound through the recurrence of single words, grammatical structures and entire phrases to the reiteration of themes and stories (Segre 7). .
Some repeated phrases appear many pages apart. This can't be a coincidence as it occurs with great frequency. The recurring passages hint at subtle connections between the three volumes of the novel. The word ambulance' for example is mentioned only three times in the work: .
"I don't know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a .
vehicle of some kind. I was helped- (Molloy).
"I do not remember how I got here. In an ambulance perhaps, in a.
vehicle of some kind certainly.
