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->''"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."''
-->-- Quote from prose poem "Worstward Ho".

Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish playwright, theatre director, poet and novelist. His early work is generally dark comedy with a lot of [[ViewersAreGeniuses references to art, music and philosophy]]; his mature work loses all the youthful cleverness and combines great compassion for the old, weak, infirm or ill with plentiful amounts of gallows humour; his late work is even more stripped down and goes into MindScrew territory. More detailed info can be found [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett here.]]

After completing his studies at Trinity College Dublin, Beckett taught English in Paris, where he met fellow Irishman Creator/JamesJoyce and for some time worked as a research assistant. Not surprisingly, Joyce's stream of consciousness approach to writing was a major influence on Beckett's early works, while at least some of Beckett's personal frustrations in working with Joyce were satirized in his early novel ''Watt''. Having made Paris his home, Beckett adopted French as the language of most of his writing, stating that his lesser fluency in the language guaranteed that he would write in the sparse, minimalist style that became characteristic of his later works.

In the late 1930s, Beckett survived a nearly fatal stabbing by a pimp on the streets of Paris after Beckett refused his services. His friend Suzanne Dechevaux-Dusmenil helped nurse him following his injuries and later became his wife. During the Second World War, Beckett was a messenger assisting the French resistance against German occupation, an experience of which he rarely spoke later in life. No doubt both experiences contributed to his rather bleak view of the human condition.

Beckett's theater of the absurd plays were a major influence on later generations of dramatists and screenwriters, among the most notable being Creator/EdwardAlbee, Creator/HaroldPinter, Creator/TomStoppard, and Creator/DavidMamet. Beckett remained creatively active until his very final years where ill health forced him to spend his last days in an old-age home.

In the late 1990s, the project ''Beckett on Film'' endeavored to film all 19 of Samuel Beckett's plays, the project was completed in 2001. Many of the filmed plays were made by notable directors (e.g. Creator/AtomEgoyan, Creator/NeilJordan, Creator/DavidMamet) and featured well-known stage and screen actors (e.g. Creator/JohnGielgud in his last filmed role, Creator/JohnHurt, Creator/JulianneMoore, Creator/JeremyIrons, Creator/MichaelGambon, etc).

Random Fact: While Beckett was living in the French village of Molien, he would sometimes drive a young Wrestling/AndreTheGiant to school. This was because André was too large to fit comfortable in French autos, while Beckett owned a pickup truck where he could ride in the flatbed. In later interviews, André would say that the playwright was very interested in discussing cricket scores.
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!!His works include:
[[index]]
* ''Act Without Words I'' and ''II''
* ''Rough for Theatre' I'' and ''II''
* ''Theatre/{{Endgame}}''
* ''Not I''
* ''Play''
* ''Theatre/WaitingForGodot''
* ''Murphy''
* ''Watt''
* ''Krapp's Last Tape''
* ''Mercier and Camier''
* ''Molloy'', ''Malone Dies'', and ''The Unnamable''
* ''How it Is''
* ''Happy Days''
* ''Catastrophe''
[[/index]]
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!!Tropes:
* AnimateInanimateObject: The plot of ''Act Without Words I'' is that an unnamed man is annoyed by objects that move on their own.
* AuthorAvatar: The prose characters have a tendency to declare themselves the authors of the stories preceding theirs. Malone, in ''Malone Dies'', references “the Murphys, Merciers, Molloys, Morans”, and the speaker in ''The Unnamable'' thinks of Malone as if he were an imaginary construct.
* BeigeProse / PurpleProse: Beckett's prose works are an odd (and deliberate) mix of overwrought and comically banal.
* BodyMotifs: Immobile or amputated limbs, the scatological, and blindness are very common.
* BuriedAlive: Many characters in Beckett's plays and novels are physically trapped, either by being partially buried in dirt (and eventually completely buried, as in ''Happy Days'') or by being stuck inside of trash cans, urns, etc.
* CrapsackWorld: The characters of his novels and plays often inhabit bleak and desolate surreal landscapes, most notably the protagonists crawling through mud in ''How It Is'', a husband and wife living out their last days stranded in the middle of the desert in ''Happy Days'', and the implied post-apocalyptic world of ''Theatre/{{Endgame}}'', largely devoid of human and animal life apart from the crippled and sick main characters.
* TheDividual: His protagonists often come in pairs.
* TheDrifter: Many of the characters in the novels and short stories are vagrants, wandering either to find a particular person (like Molloy and his mother) or just to find peace and rest.
* EloquentInMyNativeTongue: Deliberately [[InvokedTrope invoked]]. Beckett started writing exclusively in French from the 1940’s onwards, because he wanted his writing to be as bare and unstylised as possible. Despite being fluent and having a wide knowledge of French literature, he would still have lacked a sense of rhythm and connotation that a native speaker would possess.
* FeaturelessProtagonist: The Unnamable, to the point that "he" doesn't even know if the first-person narration is his own words or what he's hearing around him.
* TheGhost: Godot, Youdi, and many others.
* HeroOfAnotherStory: The protagonists of some of Beckett's plays and novels often appear as minor characters in later works, for example, Watt appears briefly in the last chapter of ''Mercier and Camier''.
* HomoeroticSubtext: Since much of Beckett’s work solely features male characters, it lends itself to queer readings. For example, Vladimir and Estragon in particular are often seen as having an "old married couple" dynamic, as are the eponymous Mercier and Camier as they break-up and later reunite, and [[TheLostLenore "the dear name"]] in ''Ohio Impromptu'' is sometimes interpreted as a man (especially since it seems to be partly inspired by Beckett's real-life friendship with Creator/JamesJoyce).
* IJustWantToBeFree: A trait shared by the "seedy solipsist" characters like Murphy and Krapp. However, their idea of freedom tends to involve retreating into their minds and disengaging from the outside world entirely, and they find themselves unable to do that for various reasons. [[DecompositeCharacter Victor Krap]], from the unpublished play ''Eleutheria'', expresses it quite memorably:
-->''I have always wanted to be free ... That's all I desire. At first I was a prisoner of other people. So I left them. Then I was a prisoner of myself. That was worse. So I left myself.''
* TheInsomniac: Beckett suffered from insomnia, as well as anxiety attacks and heart palpitations, traits shared by characters like Belacqua and the man in ''Ohio Impromptu''. A character in ''Murphy'' meditates by inducing a state of cardiac arrest.
* LegacyCharacter: Inverted with the Unnamable, which seems to be a consciousness cycling through different fictional identities (see AuthorAvatar). Having seemingly finished with Malone, it sets about creating Mahood, and later Worm.
* {{Minimalism}}: His plays tend to be shorter than most other plays. Also, he generally calls for minimal staging. His novels also increasingly tended toward this, culminating in ''The Unnamable'', which lacks almost everything that traditionally constitutes a novel.
* MinimalistCast: He often uses this, most notably with ''Play'' (which has three characters), ''Krapp's Last Tape'' (which has one character listening to his own voice from a tape recorder) ''Act Without Words I'' (which has one character menaced by an unseen outside force) and ''Breath'' has no characters.
* {{Mouthscreen}}: In an extremely minimalist production by the Creator/{{BBC}} of ''Not I'', this is all that can be seen of actress Billie Whitelaw (and later with the 2001 production of the play for ''Beckett on Film'' with Creator/JulianneMoore) as she performs the extended monologue, of a woman on the brink of insanity describing her life. The camera never moves from a full-screen shot of her lips and moving mouth.
* MyBelovedSmother: Beckett had a very difficult relationship with his mother, and it informed much of his later writing.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: He’d easily fall on the cynical side but his work is far too minimalist and strange to really fit in the scale.
* TheNothingAfterDeath: A common interpretation of ''The Unnamable'' and ''Not I'', where the main characters are a disembodied voice and mouth respectively, monologuing for eternity as they try to understand their situation.
* ThematicSeries: Although Beckett himself rejected the grouping, ''Molloy'', ''Malone Dies'', and ''The Unnamable'' are generally referred to as "The Trilogy" and are seen as products of the same literary experimentation. ''Not I'' and ''That Time'' are also seen as companion pieces.
* ThemeNaming: Character names beginning with “M”, the [[ThirteenIsUnlucky thirteenth]] letter in the middle of the alphabet.
* TheStoryteller: The characters often recite fragments of bleak, unnerving stories to sustain their meagre existence and keep themselves going.
* TheVoice: Pre-recorded offstage voices were a feature of the later part of his career, such as May's mother in ''Footfalls''.
* ThirdPersonPerson: Many of his characters are unable or unwilling to refer to themselves with "I", due to being deeply alienated from themselves. "Mouth", in ''Not I'', repeatedly stops her monologue dead to insist she's talking about ''"she!"'', and the protagonist of ''That Time'' even berates himself on the issue.
-->''"for God's sake did you ever say I to yourself in your life come on now [Eyes close.] could you ever say I to yourself in your life"''
* ToiletHumour: ''Lots''. Not for nothing is one of his protagonists named "Krapp".
* WallOfText: All three of the trilogy novels feature long stretches of stream-of-consciousness prose, but ''Molloy'' takes it to an extreme, with the eighty-page first chapter comprising only two paragraphs.
* WordSaladHorror: Most of his plays and novels are filled with bizarre non-sequiturs and strange juxtapositions of phrases, often combining existential dread with the most mundane everyday events.
** From ''How It Is'':
--> ''I see me on my face close my eyes not the blue the others at the back and see me on my face the mouth opens the tongue comes out lolls in the mud and no question of thirst either no question of dying of thirst either all this time vast stretch of time''
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