Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish playwright, novelist, short story writer, literary translator, poet, and theatre director. In most of his adult life, Beckett lived in Paris. He wrote literary works both in French and English.
The literary works of Beckett offer a miserable, bleak, and tragi-comic perspective of life. These elements are often linked with black comedy and humor. In his later literary career, Becket becomes extremely minimalist. He is regarded as one of the modernist writers and a key figure of the “Theatre of the Absurd” pioneered by Martin Esslin.
In 1969, Beckett received a Nobel Prize in Literature. He introduces a new form of novel and drama in which the hardships of modern man attains its peak. In 1984, he was also elected as Saoi of Aosdana.
A Short Biography of Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was born on 13th April 1906 in Foxrock, County Dublin. He was the second born in a Protestant family. His father was a manager of a surveying firm. Even though he was very energetic, he enjoyed solitude when he was a small boy. He attended Earlsfort House in Dublin. After Earlsfort House, he also attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen. In Portora Royal School, Beckett learned French, in which he also wrote his literary works. Beckett was an all-rounder athlete. He excelled in tennis, boxing, and cricket in school.
In his boyhood, he focused more on his sports than studies. However, when he was 17 years old, he attended Trinity College, where his attention turned to academics increasingly. He chose Italian and French as his subjects. Beckett also enjoyed the energetic scenes in the theatre of Post-independence Dublin. Beckett also got an opportunity to watch the films by Americans and recognizes the silent comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. These things significantly developed his interest in the Vaudevillian Tramp.
After completing his college, Beckett went to Paris, where he met James Joyce. James Joyce became his close friend and seminal influence while writing literary works. Beckett began acting and became one of the favorite and favored assistants of James Joyce in making of the Work in Progress.
After getting inspiration from the energetic Persian literary circle, Beckett started writing. He published his first poem “Whoroscope” in 1930. In a poetry competition, this poem won him a reward of ten pounds.
Soon after his publication of the poem, Beckett published a short but radical piece Proust. It is the study of a deceased author who is much admired by Beckett. The work was received but limelight and also assisted and uncertain and inexperienced artists to shape his aesthetics. In the same year, Beckett returned to Dublin and started lecturing at Trinity College. In the meantime, he was writing his first short stories. The short stories were published in the collection More Pricks than Kicks in 1934.
Being uncomfortable in the teaching post, and unwilling to settle down in a teaching career, Beckett made his parents seriously worried. In 1932, he returned to Paris and wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Like the novels to Sterne and Fielding, the novel was highly digressive and suggestive. The novel was also extensively autobiographical. It strongly reflects that Beckett was an emerging writer from the shadow of James Joyce.
Having no money, Beckett went back to Dublin and then shifted to London for a short period of time. In London, he completed his next novel Murphy, however, it was denied to publish by many publishers. He went back to Paris in 1937 and settled there permanently. In 1928, he published Murphy.
Beckett was almost killed when he was attacked by a pimp one night walking late with a friend. He was looked after by James Joyce. In the meanwhile, he also received attention from French friend Suzanne Deschevaux-Dusmesnil. Suzanne also became his life companion and wife in 1961.
In 1941, Beckett and Suzanne became a port of the Resistance when Paris was invaded. Afterward, they were made to escape when their compartment was let down. They left their apartment a few hours before the arrival of Gestapo. They escaped to Roussillon in the south of France. In 1945, Germans were defeated, and Becket went to Ireland to see his mother. From 1947 to 1950, Beckett wrote in the French Language. During this time, he wrote his first French novel Mercier et Camier. He also wrote his first novel trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. He wrote his first play Eleutheria in 1947. From 1948 to 1949, he wrote Waiting for Godot. The play Waiting for Godot brought him first public success outside France.
Beckett wrote a series of masterpiece plays in the 1950s and 1960s. During this time, he wrote Happy Days, Krapp’s Last Tape, and Endgame. Beckett also wrote extraordinary innovative prose fiction while working for the production of his plays in the United States and across Europe. The prose fictions include How It is in 1961 and The Lost One in 1970. He works received a worldwide appreciation, and in 1969 he received a Nobel Prize in Literature
Though in the 1970s, Beckett managed himself to work on some new projects, this period is marked as the less prolific period of his literary career. He started working on an autobiographical Company. In the 1980s, he produced some more prose fictions that include Worstward Ho and Ill Seen Ill. He also wrote more plays, including Ohio Impromptu and Rockaby. In 1986, he wrote his major prose fiction work Stirring Still.
In the same year, Beckett started suffering from emphysema. When he was hospitalized for the first time, he wrote his last work and the last poem, “What is the Word.” He was moved to a nursing home. He stopped writing because of his ailing health. He spent his energy translating his works. On 17th July 1989, Suzanne died; her death was followed by the death of Beckett on 22nd December 1989.
Samuel Beckett’s Writing Style
Samuel Beckett as a Dramatist
Samuel Becket is known for his innovation of new types of plays. Beckett blew a new soul in the theatre by experimenting with it. His plays are highly unconventional. The dramatist of his time mostly focused on the action of the play. Therefore, the action was considered as a crucial element in every drama. However, in his plays, Beckett overlooks the concept of action in his plays. He showed that drama/play is possible without action. Even though the action lacks in the plays of Beckett, the audience takes an interest in his place and watch it till the end without getting bored.
In his plays, Becket added the subject of boredom. The audience not only watches his play but also feels it. His every dialogue and word is full of meaning and symbols. Intense knowledge of things is required to understand the plays of Becket. Moreover, the readers/audience has to feel the play rather than simply watching it.
For the audience, it was an entirely new experience to watch this sort of drama on stage, which lacked actions. This lack of action and focus on the internal complexities of the character of the play makes Samuel Beckett a renowned dramatist of his time. Because of his innovative contribution to the theatre, he is still known in the world of dramatists. With his contributions, Beckett enlarges the concept of theatre, and therefore, it can never be underestimated.
Lack of Characterization and Plot in Beckett’s Plays
The plays of Samuel Beckett lack characterization and basic plot. In his plays, Beckett does not seem intent to tell a story. His plays lack the story, as well as he does not have any experience in sketching his characters. During his time, the audience mainly focuses on the story and characters of the play. In Beckett’s play, these two main characteristics are missing.
The audience or readers hardly knows any characters in Beckett’s plays. Beckett does not disclose the real identity of his characters. Furthermore, the plot in the plays of Beckett does not develop at all. He plays opens and ends with the same problem.
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Coleridge is the best example of a lack of characterization and plot. The main characters of the play, Estragon, and Vladimir, appear to do nothing but talk and converse about useless things. There is nothing else happening in the play but waiting for Godot, who never appears. The overall meaning and interest of the play lie in the delivery of dialogues and the deep meaning inside it.
There is no story, but a repetition of certain events, therefore there is no plot. The background of any characters in the play is unknown. The characters are not introduced completely. Therefore, the style adopted by Beckett in writing the pay was entirely new.
Language in the Works of Becket
The language employed by Beckett in his plays and other works is very interesting. Beckett employed a very simple language in his play. There is hardly any line in the plays which appears to be useful. Even though there are symbolic and rational dialogues in the play, however, apparently this does not appear to be significant. Every word he used is symbolic. Therefore, to dig a deep meaning out of it requires great attention.
Beckett employed absurdity in his use of language. He never gives meaning to dialogues. He rather leaves it on readers to extract whatever meaning they perceive from it. Moreover, apart from speeches, the dialogues of the play are small in words. Apparently, the dialogues appear to be a source for the characters to pass the time and do not give any meaning. Beckett’s dialogues in the plays are argumentative.
For example, the major characters in the play Waiting for Godot pass the ball and hat. Though they talk, their conversation is meaningless. There are many dialogues in the play that appear to be unnecessary. Beckett even creates words by himself.
Therefore, one can say that the language Becket employed in his plays is unique. Overall, his plays are rational. However, the language and the behavior of his characters seem too irrational.
Realism in Beckett’s Works
Beckett based his plays on reality. He does not show any fancy world in his plays. He prefers to illustrate life in his work, which is truly based on reality. One can say that one of the fundamental elements in his plays is realism. While describing any situations in his works, he remains close to reality. For example, his play Waiting for Godot is entirely based on reality. The characters come on and leave the stage to portray real-life situations. Even the themes of his plays are based on reality. Pessimism, boredom, life, death, and hope are the parts of reality. Thus one can say that the works of Beckett are based on reality.
Pessimism in Beckett’s Works
Beckett focuses on the pessimistic themes of his works. His works have little or no hope. His plays that belong to the Theatre of Absurd have a common theme of pessimism. The approach of Beckett to live and consequently, in his plays is pessimistic.
Elements of Complexity in Beckett’s Works
In the works of Beckett, there is complexity. Beckett does not make anything clear in his works. For example, in his play Waiting for Godot, Beckett does not make it clear who Godot is. Beckett, in his almost all works, overlooks the notion of clarity. There is no lucidity in his plays. It entirely depends upon the audience and readers how they interpret the meaning of his works.
The Nature of Beckett’s World
The dream world of Eugene Ionesco is irrational, abrupt, and unpredictable. However, the nature of Becket’s world is completely opposite to it. Becket’s world is like chess, utterly rational, and careful. One of the finest plays written by Beckett is Endgame. At the beginning of the development of each stage in the play, the protagonist announces that “Me to Play.”
The world of Beckett is also self-conscious. The characters in the play are continuously piercing the illusion of art. For example, in the play, the clove says, “This is what is called making an exit.”
Beckett’s Work, a Closed Circuit
The works of Beckett cover limited areas of experience. When he started his literary career, he said that spiritual development is only possible when the tendency or art is not expensive but contractive. His plays and novels create a close circuit. Each work is designed in a way that it focuses on a slightly deeper level than before. His works appear to be in series, each growing up in the form of continuation from the previous works.
Apparently, his works appear to be composed of irrational and unnecessary things. He starts his works from the sterility and bustles of More Pricks than Kicks and continues it to the mathematical conclusion of Imagination Dead Imagine. These works revolve around certain objects and a limited group of recollections.
A character described in earlier work also reappears in his later works. Even the characters also have the same experiences as the characters in the predecessors.
The Protagonists in Beckett’s Novels
The novels of Samuel Beckett are based on the narratives of a young man who is detached, ineffectual, and rootless at Trinity college. In the stories, these young men are failing miserably in human discourse. In his novel, Echo’s Bones, he turns his back to the place where he was born. In the novel Murphy, the young man wanders on the continent in London for some time. And in the novel Watt, he looks back at life in Ireland and also discovers some mental preoccupations which become his major concerns for the rest of his life.
In the novel Mercier et Camier, he travels for some time with his friend; however, in novel Molly, he leaves his friend and searches for his mother. In the novel Malone Dies, the young man could not find his mother and, in the condition of increasing decay, makes his way to settle down in a room to die. In the novel The Unnamable, he survives death and feels the need for a companion. Afterward, there is the slightest change in direction, and the story moves to plays and prose fiction How it is.
All these novels offer a journey and experiences of Samuel Becket in contraction.
Beckett’s Concern with Cruelty and Helplessness in his Works
Though the works of Beckett do not directly focus on the cruelty and helplessness prevailing in the world. However, it does not mean that they are devoid of it. According to Samuel Beckett, the destructive forces prevailing in the 20th century have paved the way for the lie in reason, progress, simplicity, and perfectibility. Though Beckett does not write about the wars and suffering of the world; however, he does illustrate the helplessness, sufferings, and cruelty with a unique truthfulness caused by the wars and bombs.
Beckett’s Chief Concern for Human Ineffectiveness
The works of Samuel Beckett focuses on the ineffectiveness of humans. Under the influence of James Joyce, Beckett develops artistically with wide literary achievements. However, Beckett broke away with the omniscience and abundance that Joyce portrays in his works. Instead of that, Beckett searched out the extreme limits of ignorance, economy, and inhibition. Beckett does not portray the packed world of Ulysses but creates his own bare world in Waiting for Godot.
Beckett does not talk about the man’s property, family, his position in society, and his function in society. He also takes away the normal human equipment, for example, mobility, etc. He focuses more on the intellect and emotions of his characters outside these things.
Conclusion
To conclude, one can say that the works of Becket are mostly focused on the insight of an individual. He introduces a new form of drama in English theater that has no action and plot. The language employed by Beckett is simple; there are internal complexities that make it impossible for the readers to understand it on the surface level.