Freud’s Disciple

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an interesting person to study because of his attitudes about life and his perspectives on death and the afterlife; both are amusing and disturbing at the same time. Beckett was an unusual child in his formative years, first noticed when he stated he had memories of being inside his own mother’s womb before his birth on April 13, 1906, in the small town of Foxrock, just south of Dublin. (This was a feat no normal child could attain.) He described his experience of being inside the womb as “a situation less blissful than stifling” (Conley 9). This odd nature stayed with him through adolescence, when he first showed to the world that he had the makings of an in-depth author. From the beginning, his works delved into the deep, dark recesses of the human spirit and mind. These works were almost an artistic view of Freud’s scientific discoveries about the subconscious human characteristics,

“It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter (Samuel 10).”

Despite this extremely artistic and philosophical nature, Samuel’s friends, including his old childhood friend Anthony Cronin, described him as being “an outdoor type rather than an indoor one.” They also described him as one who enjoyed roaming “by himself as well as with his cousin and brother” (Conley 13). This outdoorsy and adventurous behavior might have been the key to his artistic endeavors about people and the effect their environment has on them.

Samuel Beckett’s environment greatly affected the way he viewed the world and more importantly, the way he contributed to it. He attended Trinity College in Dublin where he received Bachelor degrees in French and Italian. There, he began to taste the delectable delights of romance languages and poetry; these would be his forte from then on. However, his love of romance languages and poetry did not come solely from his studies at the university but rather by his fateful encounter with a man named James Joyce, a writer whom Beckett admired. From this point on, the two writers seemed nearly inseparable as they fed off of each others creative spurts and even wrote about one another. Beckett received the great honor of becoming one of the “intimates in the Joyce ‘circle’ and contributed time and effort to Joyce’s work,” (Liukkonen 17). These two authors were truly a pair. They both had degrees in Italian and French and they both shared an unquenchable “passionate love” of Dante, which led to a close-knit relationship that would last long past their years.

Later in life, Beckett was invited to return to the University and teach romance languages to his pupils, yet the life of a teacher did not appeal to Beckett for very long. Unfortunately for him, his students complained about his difficult curriculum and grading standards to the extent that he was “reprimanded by the headmaster who asked whether he understood that the school’s students were ‘the cream of Ulster’?” (Conley 5). This disheartened Beckett to such a degree that he decided to give up the professional life and concentrate instead on his writing. He chose to write a paper about the Avant Garde Movement, which proved again to be fruitless, for critics denounced his writing and berated him in print. This led to his “disavowal of teaching as a profession and certainly colored his attitude in his own dealings with critics” (Ellman 11). After this disappointing venture, Beckett moved on to earn a Masters Degree from Trinity College and settled in Paris in 1937.
While in Paris, Beckett was able to effectively submerge himself into the writing community and begin writing his now famous novels such as Waiting for Godot, Malone Dies, Westward Ho, Ill Seen Ill Said, and others. Some of these works were given special honors, including one worth over $70,000. All of which these proceeds he gave to charity because Beckett believed he owed all his fame to his long time friend and mentor, James Joyce. “James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can (Samuel Beckett Quotes).”

In his 1960 collection of short stories, poems and plays, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On, Beckett proves his mettle as both an author and a humanitarian. In the poetry pieces such as “Whoroscope”, “Serena I”, and “Serena III”, Beckett describes a longing for the affection of someone that is utterly unattainable, parallel to the forbidden love of Romeo and Juliet, minus the feuding families. The characters described simply cannot be together because of fate or circumstance. Most of his poetry has this deep seeded sense of depression and leaves the audience moping toward the end. It is however, not his lack of abilities that leave his readers sad and depressed; instead it is his talent to leave his audience, after every one of his pieces, thinking of what could be, what is, and what could have been. Or in some cases, Beckett gets the audience to question its collective self worth as a human being. This delving into the human spirit is what made Samuel Barclay Beckett not only an excellent author but an extraordinary human being with insights that could even challenge scholars such as Freud. Also, in Beckett’s radio plays, or more appropriately called serenades, he used his incredible gift to combine music and language to illustrate to an audience how people think in different situations. These plays were raw creativity and blissful interpretations of people’s emotions in their truest form as seen by Beckett. One example of this ability to show people these truths is in his short story called A Stirrings Still which dealt with death, separation, anxiety and a willingness to simply give up. “One night or day then as he sat at his table, head on hands, he saw himself rise and go. First rise and stand clinging to the table. Then sit again. Then rise again and stand clinging to the table again.” (Conley). In this quote, Beckett shows how the protagonist is uncertain and on the verge of throwing in the towel. Many of the environments Beckett’s characters find themselves in are ones of darkness, misery and despair, nature always mimicking the inescapable dark mood, “Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me.” (BrainyMedia 12). In a great majority of his poems where nature mimics the dark mood, Beckett puts either himself or his characters, which he describes as an extension of himself, close to or inhabiting the surrounding environment as opposed to being simply the observer.

Samuel Barclay Beckett gave the world an artistic view of what Freud was trying to prove scientifically. The extreme and raw nature of the human spirit as seen though the eyes of a scientist and author showed both prospective audiences a side of the human being to which most have given no thought but can only feel inside of themselves. Beckett puts to words how people deal with death, happiness, depression, isolation, and love, all of which everyone goes through. Yet, in reading Beckett’s works from the perspective of an audience and of another human being is in itself enlightening. It shows how every person feels the same emotions, regardless of how trivial or urgent they may seem. “The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.” (BrainyMedia 22). Although Beckett essentially isolated himself from others, due to his uncanny insight of the human soul and the world around him, he still gave the world an accurate portrayal of raw human emotions through his poetry, drama, and short stories. Samuel Beckett was truly a gifted and intelligent man who, luckily for his audiences, gave a piece of himself to the world.