Interpretation
Joe does not come across as a particularly likeable man. On the surface he is like many of Beckett’s lonely old men, affected by the effects of the choices he has made, but whereas many have simply ended up where they are by avoiding humanity, Joe has used and discarded it, particularly its women. But does he feel responsible, let alone guilty, for his actions? Either way, something is playing on his mind. The woman’s voice that carps at him acts as if she is “a representation, an exteriorization of Joe’s internal conflict” but the reality is she is “not only the voice of memory, even memory rearranged or juxtaposed, but at least creative if not created memory, that is, memory leaching into imagination or creativity. Were she not, how could he “squeeze away” at her until he finally silences her completely? Beckett was very specific when writing to Alan Schneider: “An inner voice from the past.”
In the “version of He Joe directed by Walter Asmus and Beckett, recorded in Germany 1979 … he camera pursues Joe in line with the text’s instructions; but Joe is positioned on the right of the frame, and he does not look at the camera as it moves inexorably closer. The effect is to deepen the ambiguity of the voice’s location; Joe’s posture suggests that the voice is whispering directly into his ear, but the place where the one whispering would normally sit is, the framing constantly reminds us, empty.”
Why a woman though and why this particular woman? “Aspects of consciousness, according to Jung, can become almost independent personalities and might even ‘become visible or audible. They appear as visions, they speak in voices which are like the voices of definite people.’” “His protagonist represents an aspect of psychological duality, akin to Jung’s Anima or Shadow. Voice in Eh Joe is less Joe’s dark or evil side than his opposite: feminine, constant, secure and irreligious, to Joe’s masculine, lecherous, dishonest but (surprisingly) religious self,”
There is little material to build a fully rounded character but the woman appears to have been a survivor. Whereas the other one, “he green one” as she calls her, couldn’t bear to live without Joe, the woman whose voice Joe hears made a better life for herself without him. She is the logical choice for Joe’s last surviving accuser. In many respects she is the distillation of all the previous voices, a last gasp, pointing an accusing finger at him on behalf of herself and all the others, particularly the suicide. In doing so 'he finds that hell is not only other people but himself'.
We learn nothing about why his mother or father might trouble him after their deaths but disapproving or disappointed parents are plentiful enough throughout Beckett’s work. Joe suffers his father’s ‘ghost’ for years until he realises that he can affect it, that by an act of will he can stop the words, to make the literally dead also figuratively dead. In a letter sent to MacGreevy on 6 April 1965, Beckett writes: "I shake at the thought of the ordeal you have been through. At least you are through it. You mustn't give up. Putting down memories is enough to make anyone crack." This is what Beckett means by the expression “All your dead dead,” those ‘ghosts’ that he has exorcised in this way. This is reminiscent of the following lines from The Expelled:
- Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, or those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don't there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little. That is to say, you must think of them for a while, a good while, every day several times a day, until they sink forever in the mud. That's an order.
“The play is full of verbs conveying what Joe’s voice describes as ‘mental thuggee’: throttle, muzzle, spike, squeeze, tighten, silence, garrotte, finish, mum, strangle, stamp out, exterminate, still, kill, lay, choke.” “’It is his passion to kill the voices which he cannot kill,’ said Beckett.”
The religious subtext did not exist in the earliest drafts. Beckett incorporated it after a two-week break in working on the play. He makes Joe a Catholic (as the prayer to Mary suggests) and, as the Catholic Church views suicide as a mortal sin, how would Joe feel if he thought he might be even indirectly responsible for this? This, of course, brings up the whole issue of Catholic guilt. An omission in all printed versions is the capitalization in the expression, “The passion of our Joe,” which Beckett wanted to read – though of course it makes no difference to the performance – “The passion of Our Joe.”
It has been suggested that Joe is actually masturbating while all this is going on – and some of Voice’s remarks do, not unreasonably, attack his current level of sexual prowess – but scholars tend to skim over the imagery used in the final section of Voice’s diatribe so it is difficult to give anything more than a speculative interpretation. Beckett certainly has not shied away from the subject (it appears in Mercier and Camier for example) but there is a danger of reading too much into Beckett rather than just enough.
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