How It Is (Masterplots II: World Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Samuel Beckett
- First Published: 1961
- Type of Work: Existential allegory
- Time of Work: Unspecified
- Setting: A wasteland of mud
- Principal Characters: Bom, Pim
- Genres: Long fiction, Existential literature
- Subjects: Self-discovery, Memory, Philosophy or philosophers, Surrealism
The Novel
How It Is chronicles a journey which is, for the most part, maddeningly static. The tale is told in first person by the protagonist, who is crawling through the mud. He moves an arm, then a leg. He pushes, pulls, and laboriously progresses ten or fifteen yards. Over his shoulder he carries a sack, which he must constantly shift and rearrange. In the sack are tins, or cans, the contents of which he does not describe.
The setting is nightmarish. The entire terrain is mud, and the duration of the action is unmeasurable. The narrator speaks not in...
[The entire page is 1860 words long]
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