ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief investigation of some of Beckett's early prose writing, focusing on the concept of 'dehiscence', a term normally used of plants or diseased organs to describe a process of maturation followed by rupture and dispersal. It charts Beckett's search for an equivalent dramatic aesthetic capable of rupturing the conventions of theatre, like the surface of language in the early writing, and sundering the performing body from any coherent dramatic world. It might be said that Beckett was beginning to envisage the dramatic equivalent of the aesthetic of 'dehiscence' directed particularly against the conventions of bourgeois society and theatre. The motif of 'dehiscence' occurs in Beckett's review of the Irish dramatist Sean O'Casey's collection of diverse writings, Windfalls , in The Bookman of 1936. The dramatic strategy of dehiscence, of the protagonist and the dramatic world coming asunder, is literally presented in Beckett’s first full-length play through the conflict between Victor Krap and his family environment.
