Synopsis

The trip there

This is the first work by Beckett where a woman is the central character. In this case it is a
gritty, "overwhelmingly capacious",[6] outspoken, Irish septuagenarian, Maddy Rooney,
plagued by "rheumatism and childlessness".[7] "Beckett emphasised to Billie Whitelaw that
Maddy had an Irish accent:

'I said, "Like yours," and he said, "No, no, no, an Irish accent." I realised he didn't know he had
an Irish accent, and that was the music he heard in his head.'"[8]

The opening scene finds Maddy trudging down a country road towards the station, renamed
"Boghill"[9] in the play. It's her husband's birthday. She's already given him a tie but decides to
surprise him by meeting him off the 12:30 train. It is a fine June morning, a Saturday since her
husband is leaving his office at noon rather than five. In the distance the sounds of rural
animals are heard.

She moves with difficulty. She hears chamber music coming from an old house, Schubert's
"Death and the Maiden".[10] She stops, listens to the recording and even murmurs along with
it before proceeding.

Her first of three encounters with men is with the dung carrier, Christy, who tries to sell her a
"small load of … stydung".[11] She tells him she will consult her husband. The man's cart is
being pulled by a "cleg-tormented" hinny who shows some reluctance to move on and needs
to be whipped. As she heads off Maddy's thoughts return to "Minnie! Little Minnie!"[12]

The smell of laburnum[13] distracts her. Suddenly old Mr Tyler is upon her ringing his cycle
bell. Whilst relating how his daughter's operation has rendered her unable to bear children,
they are almost knocked down by Connolly's van, which covers them "white with dust from
head to foot".[12] Maddy again bemoans the loss of Minnie but refuses to be comforted by
Tyler who rides off despite realising that his rear tyre is flat.

Lastly an "old admirer",[14] Mr Slocum, a racecourse clerk, pulls up in his "limousine"[15] to

At each stage of the journey the technology she encounters advances, but despite this each
means of locomotion is beset by problems, foreshadowing the problem with the train: she
finds walking difficult and is forced to sit down, Christy needs to whip his hinny to make her go,
Tyler's tire goes flat, and Slocum's engine dies. All the relatives mentioned in this section are
female and all the modes of transport are also referred to as females.

The station

At the station Slocum calls on the porter, Tommy, for assistance to extricate his passenger,
after which he drives away, "crucifying his gearbox."[16] Beckett told Billie Whitelaw that
Maddy "is in a state of abortive explosiveness".[17] This becomes apparent when she
considers herself ignored. To the boy Tommy she says abrasively: "Don’t mind me. Don’t take
any notice of me. I do not exist. The fact is well known."[18] As Ruby Cohn quips, "she endures
volubly."[19]
The stationmaster, Mr Barrell, asks after Mrs Rooney's health. She confesses that she should
really still be in bed. We hear of the demise of Mr Barrell's father, who died shortly after
retiring, a tale that reminds Maddy again of her own woes. She notes that the weather has
taken a change for the worse; the wind is picking up and rain is due.

Miss Fitt approaches so immersed in humming a hymn she doesn't see Maddy at first. Miss
Fitt, as her name indicates, is a self-righteous misfit. After some discussion she condescends to
help the old woman up the stairs to the platform, primarily because "it is the Protestant thing
to do."[20]

Unusually the train is late. The noise of the station becomes louder but the eventual is an
anticlimax; it is the oft-mentioned up mail. Dan's train comes in moments afterwards. Maddy
panics. She can't find her husband because he has been led to the gents by Jerry,[21] the boy
who normally helps him to the taxi. Tightfisted Dan chides her for not cancelling Jerry but still
pays his penny fee. He refuses however to discuss the reason for the train's lateness. Not
without some difficulty – her husband is also not a well man – they descend the stairs and
begin the trek home.

On her journey to the station Maddy only had to compete with one person at a time, each an
old man. Now she is faced with a crowd. Rather than the flat open countryside she has to
contend with a mountainous climb; she refers to the stairs as a "cliff", her husband calls them
a "precipice" and Miss Fitt compares them to the "Matterhorn", a mountain that for years
inspired fear in climbers. Also, the means of transport that are mentioned here, the Titanic,
the Lusitania and the train due are modes of mass transport and the level of danger shifts from
the inconvenient to the potentially lethal. All the relatives mentioned in this section are now
male.

The walk home

The weather is worsening. The thought of getting home spurs them on. Dan imagines sitting by
the fire in his dressing gown with his wife reading aloud from Effi Briest.[22] The Lynch twins
jeer at them from a distance. Dan shakes his stick and chases them off. Previously they have
pelted the old couple with mud. "Did you ever wish to kill a child?"[23] Dan asks her then
admits to having to resist the impulse within himself. This makes his comment shortly after
about being alone in his compartment – "I made no attempt to restrain myself."[24] – all the
more suspicious. This also focuses attention on his remarks about the pros and cons of
retirement: one of the negatives he brings up has to do with enduring their neighbour's
children.

Dan is as laconic as Maddy is loquacious. His refusal to explain why the train was delayed
forces her to pester him with questions which he does his best to avoid answering. He
prevaricates and digresses, anything to throw her off track. Eventually he maintains that he
honestly has no clue what the cause was. Being blind and on his own he had simply assumed
the train had stopped at a station.

Something Dan says reminds Maddy of a visit she once made to hear "a lecture by one of these
new mind doctors.[25] What she heard there was the story of a patient the doctor had failed
to cure, a young girl who was dying, and "did in fact die, shortly after he had washed his hands
of her."[26] The reason the doctor gave for the girl's death, as if the revelation had just come
to him there and then, was: "The trouble with her was that she had never really been
born!"[27]
As they near the house Maddy passed earlier, Schubert's music is still playing. Dan starts to cry.
To stop her asking questions he asks about the text of Sunday's sermon. "The Lord upholdeth
all that fall and raiseth up all those that be bowed down,"[28] she tells him, and then they both
burst out laughing. Mr Slocum and Miss Fitt had both passed comment on Maddy's bent
posture. Perhaps, this is partly why they laugh: it is the best reaction to a life of unending
misery in a world devoid of any God. In Happy Days, Winnie asks "How can one better magnify
the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones".[29] It
is worthy of mention too that "it is Mr Tyler, rather than the Lord, who saved the preacher’s
life when they were climbing together".[30] It would be fair to assume that Maddy doesn’t
really believe in a god any more. When she says, "We are alone. There is no one to ask." She is
certainly not talking about there being no one to ask about her husband's age.[24]

Jerry catches them up to return something Mr Rooney has dropped. Learning that it is some
kind of ball he demands the boy hand it to him. When pressed by his wife all he will say is that:
"It is a thing I carry about with me,"[31] and becomes angry when pressed on the subject. They
have no small change so promise to give Jerry a penny on Monday to compensate him for his
trouble.

Just as the boy starts back Maddy calls him to see if he has learned what delayed the train. He
has. Dan doesn't want to know – "Leave the boy alone, he knows nothing! Come on!"[32] – but
his wife insists. Jerry tells her that it was a child at which point her husband groans. When
pushed for details the boy goes on: "It was a little child fell out of the carriage, Ma’am … Onto
the line, Ma’am … Under the wheels, Ma’am."[32] We assume the child is a girl – all the
foreshadowing in the play has been pointing to that – but, crucially, Beckett never actually
says. (See his comment to Kay Boyle below however).

With that Jerry exits. We hear his steps die away and the couple head off in silence. Maddy
must realise the death happened while she was making her way to the station but she is – for
once – speechless. All we are left with is the wind and the rain and to wonder what, if
anything, Mr Rooney actually had to do with the death of the child.

The third section of the play returns Maddy to the relative calm of the walk home. They
encounter a further three people only this time they are all children. The laburnum also serves
as an important benchmark. In the opening scene Maddy admires it, now its condition has
deteriorated. The weather has also continued to worsen until, at the end, they are in the
middle of a "[t]empest of wind and rain".[32] The actor David Warrilow relates: "When I saw
Beckett in January, one of the first things he said was: 'What do you think of All That Fall?’...
[Later I asked him the same question.] And he looked down and said, 'Well, a number of
weaknesses'. [I asked:] 'Do you mean the production?’ He said, 'No, no, no. The writing.'...
'What I really was waiting for was the rain at the end.'"[33]

In 1961 Kay Boyle asked Beckett if, at the end of Happy Days, Willie is reaching for the gun, or
for his wife. Beckett replied:

"The question as to which Willie is 'after' – Winnie or the revolver – is like the question in All
That Fall as to whether Mr Rooney threw the little girl[34] out of the railway-carriage or not.
And the answer is the same in both cases – we don’t know, at least I don’t … I know creatures
are supposed to have no secrets for their authors, but I’m afraid mine for me have little
else."[35]