Dark, minimal, existential – these words characterize the writing of Nobel Prize winning author, Samuel Barclay Beckett, born in 1906 in Dublin Ireland. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for play writing and novel writing, and in the Nobel summary it states: “for his writing, which – in new forms for the novel ...
Literature often reflects history; many authors incorporate common historical conflicts to create the main struggle in their work of fiction. The same is true for Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. According to James Martin Harding, Beckett’s play identifies the historical ‘dialectic’, which in this case means a conflict between two opposing ideas, of “lordship and ...
Stanley Webber, the protagonist, is a recluse in his late 30s characterized by humour, consternation and fear. Highly capricious at one moment and highly humorous at another, he appears like a frightened animal. He appears to be a pianist in his past life. He is an escapist as he comes across as a recluse set ...
Many works of widespread literature earned their notoriety due to the reader’s ability to relate to the context, yet Samuel Beckett’s Endgame describes the world from the perspective of the most dismal humans on it, or possibly beyond it. Clov embodies a horrible nightmare of static misery that hopefully exceeds the reader’s level of understanding. ...
Samuel Beckett was one of the authors at the crux of the twentieth-century French philosophical movement known as the “Theater of the Absurd”. The concept of the absurd manifests itself in Beckett’s Endgame, through it’s irrationality, meaninglessness, and use of dark humor, particularly in the interactions between Hamm and Clov. The absence of meaning is ...
Berkeley, California-based Publishers Group West was a book sales and distribution company that represented over 100 independent publishers. While it serviced some larger publisher imprints of Random House and Simon & Schuster, PGW was the marketing and distribution salvation for small quality presses like McSweeney’s, Soft Skull Press, and my own publisher Foxrock Books. On ...
For the characters in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, movement is a big part of their lives. It is second behind death. They rely on each other to move and make sure the movement is constant. Beckett uses physical movement throughout the play as a way for the characters to develop a sense of routine, establish a ...
The theme of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is the angst and universal inevitability of endings, particularly the ultimate ending — death. Endgame’s primary assumption is that there are endings to everything. As the play opens, three of the four characters are in the final stages of life by virtue of age or infirmary. The stage is ...
There’s so much rubbish in movies today, even a film about a psychopathic tire will garner box-office. That seems to be the underlying jab from Quentin Dupieux’s mock-horror film “Rubber.” With overt metaphors and monologues that smash the 4th wall with stabbing commentary, “Rubber” beautifies the rubbish it mocks. The tire, Robert, awakens from a ...
It is possible to bring the spirit of St. Patrick to your classroom without offending anyone’s religious or cultural beliefs. St. Patrick is a historical figure, who has an interesting life and history. Additionally, the St. Patrick’s buzz is the perfect opportunity to launch into a history of Ireland. Cultural and anthropological studies allow for ...