…but the clouds… (1976) by Samuel Beckett (Key Facts)

 

…but the clouds… (1976)

by Samuel Beckett

(Key Facts) 

Key Facts — …but the clouds… (1976) by Samuel Beckett

 

Full Title:

…but the clouds…

 

Author:

Samuel Beckett

 

Type of Work:

Short experimental dramatic piece / lyric dramatic monologue

 

Genre:

Modernist drama; Theatre of the Absurd; minimalist existential drama

 

Language:

English

 

Time and Place Written:

Mid-1970s; Paris, France

 

Date of First Publication / Broadcast:

1976 (written); first broadcast shortly after in the late 1970s

 

Publisher:

Faber and Faber (UK)

 

Tone:

Bleak, meditative, introspective, melancholic, restrained

 

Setting (Time):

An unspecified present, shaped by memory and recollection rather than chronological time

 

Setting (Place):

A bare, indeterminate space representing both a physical location and the inner landscape of the mind

 

Protagonist:

The Man / Speaker (M)

 

Major Conflict:

The Man’s struggle between persistent hope and the near certainty of futility as he waits for the woman’s appearance

 

Rising Action:

The Man’s repeated recollections of past waiting rituals and the rare, fleeting appearances of the Woman, which renew his hope

 

Climax:

The faint, brief reappearance of the Woman in the present moment of the play

 

Falling Action:

The Woman’s disappearance and the Man’s return to solitude and continued waiting

 

Themes:

Waiting as a way of life

Unattainable desire

Instability of memory

Isolation and silence

Endurance despite futility

 

Motifs:

Repetition of waiting rituals

Silence and pauses

Fragmented recollection

Appearance and disappearance

 

Symbols:

The Woman: unattainable ideal (love, inspiration, meaning)

Waiting: human existence suspended between hope and despair

Darkness / Empty space: isolation and the limits of understanding

Clouds (title): obstruction, uncertainty, partial concealment of meaning

 

Foreshadowing:

The Man’s acknowledgment of the Woman’s increasing rarity foreshadows her final disappearance and the inevitability of continued waiting without fulfillment