Molloy
Samuel Beckett
 The plot, what little there is of it, is revealed in the course of the two inner monologues that make up the book. The first monologue is split into two paragraphs. The first paragraph is less than two pages long; the second paragraph lasts for over eighty pages. The first is by a former vagrant named Molloy, who is now living "in [his] mother's room" and writing to "speak of the things that are left, say [his] goodbyes, finish dying." He describes a journey he had taken some time earlier, before he came there, to find his mother. He spends much of it on his bicycle, gets arrested for resting on it in a way that is considered lewd, but is unceremoniously released. From town to anonymous town and across anonymous countryside, he encounters a succession of bizarre characters: an elderly man with a stick; a policeman; a charity worker; a woman whose dog he kills running over it with a bike (her name is never completely determined: "a Mrs Loy... or Lousse, I forget, Christian name something like Sophie"), and one whom he falls in love with ("Ruth" or maybe "Edith"); He abandons his bicycle (which he will not call "bike"), walks in no certain direction, meeting "a young old man"; a charcoal-burner living in the woods, whom he murders with a hard blow to the head; and finally a character who takes him in, to the room. The second is by a private detective by the name of Jacques Moran, who is given the task by his boss, the mysterious Youdi, of tracking down Molloy. He sets out, taking his recalcitrant son, also named Jacques, with him. They wander across the countryside, increasingly bogged down by the weather, decreasing supplies of food and Moran's suddenly failing body. He sends his son to purchase a bicycle and while his son is gone, Moran encounters a strange man who appears before him. Moran murders him (in manner comparable to Molloy's), and then hides his body in the forest. Eventually, the son disappears, and he struggles home. At this point in the work, Moran begins to pose several odd theological questions, which make him appear to be going mad. Having returned to his home, now in a state of shambles and disuse, Moran switches to discussing his present state. He has begun to use crutches, just as Molloy does at the beginning of the novel. Also a voice, which has appeared intermittently throughout his part of the text, has begun to significantly inform his actions. The novel ends with Moran delineating how the beginning of his report was crafted. He reveals that the first words of the section were told to him by this nascent voice, which instructed him to sit down and begin writing. 'It is midnight. Rain is beating against the window.' It was not midnight. It was not raining. Thus, Moran forsakes reality, beginning to descend into the command of this &#34;voice&#34; which may in fact mark the true creation of Molloy. Due to the succession of the book from the first part to the second the reader is led to believe that time is passing in a similar fashion; however, the second part could be read as a prequel to the first.