The Expelled

Beckett has accommodated the mess of thought in The Expelled. Though the narrator may be pathological he demonstrates characteristics of average human thought. He is sporadic in his memory, and his thought is loosely connected to what is happening around him.

A major congruency throughout the story is memory. Beckett indirectly questions the importance of remembering, as well as what it is important to remember. It seems that the narrator has no need for the exact replication of certain events. For example, the steps he has counted a thousand times are only "not many". He says, "The figure has gone from my mind." The figure of the memory seems not to be important in this case. "The important thing to remember is that there were not many, and that I have remembered." The story proceeds from this point to be sometimes precise in its account, while at other times he can't remember a thing. This seems to be directly inverted of his recent priority of memory. It is. The story is details, details, details. Which is why he ends the story telling the reader, "I don't know why I told you this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I'll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are." The narrator assumes that the main theme of any story he tells will be the same and only the unimportant details will change.
Unimportant details seem to comprise the entire story. This is the answer to the question of memory for Beckett. Any story no matter what it is conveys these unimportant details they are "neither the cradle nor the grave of anything whatever". The narrator proceeds to follow the sun to death, just as all memory, all stories, all thought arrives at the death bed. The important thing is living, existing in the moment. "Memories are killing."