English 101: English Literature

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This video will introduce the late modernist author and playwright Samuel Beckett. A close friend of James Joyce, Beckett's works typically portray a meaningless, absurd existence. This is epitomized in his most famous work, 'Waiting for Godot.'

Samuel Beckett

We're going to be talking about Samuel Beckett and the Theater of the Absurd. He's a writer who is kind of on the latter end of Modernism and right up into Postmodernism; he straddles that border a little bit.

He was born in Ireland in 1906 on Friday the 13th, which was Good Friday, so he was clearly destined for great things as well as slightly creepy things. He's most famous now for his plays, particularly Waiting for Godot, which was first performed in 1953.

He also wrote prose. Actually, he started out writing prose.

Samuel Beckett & James Joyce

He spent a lot of time hanging out with fellow Irish writer James Joyce early in his career. He helped him research and transcribe Finnegan's Wake. Beckett was basically his secretary, taking transcription, essentially, of Finnegan's Wake.

There is a story that a professor of mine used to tell, which may or may not be true, but gets at the essence of this relationship. Apparently, Joyce was saying what he wanted to write down and Beckett was typing it or writing it. Then, Joyce dropped something on his foot and swore. Beckett asked if that should go in the book and Joyce said, 'Yeah, just throw it in.' If you read Finnegan's Wake, you'll understand; everything is in that book. So that was what Joyce and Beckett got up to in an influential time in Beckett's career; he was a lot younger than Joyce at that time.

Beckett's Works

Through the 1930s, he publishes a few novels. He publishes story and poetry collections. The most famous of those is probably Murphy in 1938. Also, just as an aside, he loves M names, particularly in his fiction, not so much in his plays. Names that start with M and Beckett? They're like this.

WWII - Post-WWII

He kind of bums around Germany for a while. He ends up in Paris. He almost dies when stabbed by a pimp (no joke!). He kind of upset him for some reason, though no one really knows. Then World War II breaks out and he joins the French Resistance. He hangs out doing that.

When World II ends, some important things happen for Beckett. The first is that he starts writing in French. His native language is English, but he knew French pretty well and he was able to write in it. So it's different than if, say, I were trying to write in German or something like that. But it's still going to have an effect on his prose and what he's able to do.

The second thing is that he makes a conscious decision that he's going to be way more minimalist and weird than he was prior to World War II. He makes this conscious decision to not be like Joyce. Joyce, especially by the end of his career, was trying to cram everything in, everything and the kitchen sink into his books.

For the sake of argument, let's compare Joyce to J.K. Rowling (post-book three when she maybe fires her editor). She puts everything in those books. There's nothing that's left out in those later Harry Potter books.

If Beckett were telling the story of Harry Potter, it would probably be more like a conversation on a blank stage between Professor Quirrell (the guy with the turban who had Voldemort in the back of his head) and then the four creators of the Marauder's Map, which is just four guys and a map. It would be the most absurd, boiled down conversation between just random people. That's Beckett's take on material that Joyce would've tried to put everything in that's possible.

Theater of the Absurd

When Beckett is doing this kind of bizarro form of minimalism in theater, it's called the Theater of the Absurd. This is a movement that's getting going. It's not just him. It's getting going in the 50s and 60s in theater.

Waiting for Godot is the hallmark play of this. It premieres in 1953. It's about two dudes named Vladimir and Estragon. They are, you guessed it, waiting for Godot who (spoiler alert) never shows up. We also never really find out who he is.

Like I said before, it's really the centerpiece of the Theater of the Absurd. These plays tend to have characters that talk a lot and meander around, but without really a meaning to ground it. So they talk around meaningless, basically. So they kind of just bicker and talk about stuff.

Nothing really happens. It doesn't really go anywhere. But it's kind of funny. They circle this drain of nothingness, but in kind of a very funny way. A lot of the Theater of the Absurd is darkly comic.

He writes some other plays that are kind of in this vein. Endgame premieres in 1957. That has a character in it called Hamm, who's blind, and his parents, Nell and Nagg, who live in trashcans. (Yes, like Oscar the grouch.)

He also writes Happy Days, which premieres in 1961. This play has the characters Winnie and Willie. Winnie is buried in the ground and Willie is asleep.

You can see that these setups are just bizarre. They're meant to be showcases for random, weird dialogue between people that kind of dances around this question of meaninglessness and whether there's meaning in things.

Novels

Roughly around the same time as he's writing these plays he's most famous for, he also writes some darkly comic, similarly-themed novels. They're all kind of absurdist. They're not quite as famous, but you should know they exist.

They're known retroactively as 'The Trilogy'. They are Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable. You see those M names are coming back.

Molloy is just the internal monologues of a bum named Molloy and a detective named Moran, who's trying to track him down and might turn into Molloy at the end. He starts to go crazy and we don't know what's going on.

In Malone Dies, Malone is in an asylum or maybe a hospital He's telling his story but he's also telling another story.

In The Unnameable, you can't tell what's going on. It's entirely in monologue, but it's not really representative of anything. It's just kind of words.

The novels seem to represent a progression from semi-normal narrative to just absurdity, with no characters, just language that you get in the end of The Unnameable. There's no attempt to represent anything. It's just words that we get by the end.

You can see how this dovetails with themes that are present in the plays. We're in this absurd space that doesn't really reflect anything that's going on in reality, and it's also in total stasis. Nothing happens in the plays or in the novels or really much of anything.

It's more about meditating on nothingness, which is what Beckett's really good at. Because of this, he's relentlessly dark, but he's also pretty funny. He has a sense of humor about the fact that life doesn't mean anything, which you could argue is something that maybe we all should have.

Lesson Summary

So a quick review of Beckett: He's friends with Joyce, influenced by progression of Joyce's later works. He takes the opposite path. Instead of trying to incorporate everything, he accepts meaninglessness and he writes about that.

His important plays are Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Happy Days, among a few others. Then there's the novel trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable. These are less likely to be famous, but they're still pretty cool.

It's kind of this dark comedy about the meaninglessness of life. If I were going to draw a contemporary analogy, I'd say maybe Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a good Beckettian character. He huffs glue. He eats cat food. He's kind of generally disgusting, but he's also a genius. That's kind of Beckett.