'Not I' is not about 'I', insists Mouth. Nonetheless, however much she denies the 'I' of personal responsibility, there is no escaping the pitiless eye of her audience.

We take our seats and gaze at the stage, or screen. The audience's presence summons a response on stage. With our 'attention sufficient' (as Beckett puts it), through the silence and empty darkness begins an unintelligible prologue from an agitated but scarcely perceptible mouth.

Though the bodily existence of the 'character' is practically at an end, consciousness remains 'flickering away on its own', unable to endure or accept - in the first person - the hellish anguish of human experience. Such denial of subjectivity, however, also rejects the identity as present narrator. As a consequence of adopting such a position, Mouth becomes painfully aware 'of the stare she was getting' from the audience, demanding truth. She feels guilty enough to 'die of shame' but still frantically resists the mind's interrogation: '… what? … who? … no! … she!'

Our persistent, punishing stare offers no compassion. Eventually, her narration again becomes unintelligible as we withdraw the effort to comprehend. However, she is perpetually condemned to 'pick it up' again, from the beginning, each time an audience provokes and protracts further suffering. The unloving world that Mouth has endured, she discovers, also includes us.