First Love (Première amour) by Samuel Beckett (Key Facts)

 

First Love (Première amour)

by Samuel Beckett

(Key Facts) 

Key Facts: First Love by Samuel Beckett

 

Full Title

First Love (Première amour)

 

Author

Samuel Beckett

 

Type of Work

Short story (prose fiction)

 

Genre

Modernist fiction; Existential literature; Absurdist fiction

 

Language

Originally written in French

Later translated into English by Samuel Beckett

 

Time and Place Written

Written in 1946, primarily in France (post–World War II period)

 

Date of First Publication

French version: 1970

English version: 1973

 

Publisher

Published in literary collections of Beckett’s short prose

(English editions commonly published by Calder & Boyars / Grove Press)

 

Tone

Bleak, ironic, detached, darkly comic, emotionally flat

 

Setting (Time)

Mid-20th century; post-war period (not explicitly dated)

 

Setting (Place)

An unnamed European city (often associated with Dublin or France), including:

Streets and public benches

A small rented room

Urban domestic interiors

 

Characters

Protagonist

The unnamed male narrator

 

Major Conflict

The narrator’s desire for isolation and emotional withdrawal conflicts with the demands of human intimacy, domestic life, and responsibility.

 

Rising Action

Father’s death and narrator’s eviction

Homeless wandering

Meeting Lulu

Moving into her room

Development of a sexual relationship

 

Climax

The birth of the child, which overwhelms the narrator and disrupts his controlled solitude.

 

Falling Action

The narrator’s growing irritation, withdrawal, and inability to cope with the infant’s presence.

 

Resolution

The narrator abandons Lulu and the child and returns to solitude.

 

Themes

Alienation and isolation

Failure of love and intimacy

Absurdity of human relationships

Burden of bodily existence

Freedom versus responsibility

Emotional detachment and meaninglessness

 

Motifs

Silence versus noise

Routine, pacing, and measurement

Homelessness and displacement

Withdrawal from society

Repetition and stasis

 

Symbols

Bench – Transience, isolation, marginal existence

Room/House – Confinement, domestic burden

Child – Responsibility, intrusion of life, continuity

Name change (Lulu → Anna) – Attempt at identity and social order

Crying – Inescapable presence of existence

 

Foreshadowing

The narrator’s indifference to his father’s death foreshadows his later abandonment of his own child

His early resistance to human contact anticipates his rejection of domestic life

His obsession with silence prefigures his flight from the crying infant

 

One-Line Critical Insight (Useful for Exams)

First Love exposes the irony of intimacy by portraying love not as fulfillment, but as an intrusion into a life devoted to withdrawal and isolation.