Ready Reference Treatise: Waiting for Godot

By Raja Sharma

Guide books or book notes are primarily written to make students understand the original text better, especially from all those angles which are often overlooked by a casual reader.

But, in the recent years it has been noticed that a very large majority of the students, without reading the original texts, rely on the guide books or notes prepared by their teachers or others. This is definitely not a healthy habit because students do pass their exams with the help of such notes; they miss so many things which haunt them in their later lives.

I would strongly advise all students to read the original text once again even if you have already read it, after reading this short treatise. You will see that the same story, after reading this treatise, will begin to give many new meanings to you.

All the best.

Raja Sharma

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Aug 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476451787

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

Book preview

Ready Reference Treatise: Waiting for Godot

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2012 Raja Sharma

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved.

Chapter One: Introduction Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was born on April 13, Good Friday, in 1906 in Ireland. His father William Frank Beckett was a Civil Engineer. His father was 35 years old when Beckett was born. At the time of his birth, Beckett’s mother May Barclay was also 35 years old. His parents had married in 1901.

Beckett was a novelist, playwright, theatre director, and a poet; most of his adult life he spent in Paris. He was proficient in both English and French and he wrote in these two languages.

Most of his works present an outlook on the bleak and tragicomic aspects of human nature. He often mingled them with black comedy and gallows humour.

It is without any doubt said that Samuel Beckett is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. His writings were highly influenced by James Joyce. He is considered as one of the last modernists. He was an inspiration to many future writers and some writers and critics call him the foremost postmodernist.

Samuel Beckett is said to be the most powerful of the writers in the so called Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin. As his career progressed, his works began to be more minimalist.

Samuel Beckett was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1969. In the year 1984, he was