ABSTRACT

Texts by Samuel Beckett and Caryl Churchill convey apocalyptic moods, and Churchill’s fragmentary scripts amplify Beckett’s legacy, outlining the threats posed by global capitalism and climate change. The chapter contends that Beckett’s and Churchill’s texts reflect disjointed political realities through embodied phenomenologies of mood that portent apocalypse. If the mood of despondency in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot reveals the fallibility of modernist energetic striving, the mad horror evoked by Churchill’s personae in Escaped Alone presumes the 21st-century fall of humanity. These reveal that as mood orientates but restricts human perception, performed emotions cut across culture’s mood as political action in the world.