Human Wishes (c. 1936–1937, fragment) by Samuel Beckett (Summary)

 

Human Wishes (c. 1936–1937, fragment)

by Samuel Beckett

(Summary) 

Summary

London, heavy with soot and sorrow, lies under a gray sky. Inside a modest, dimly lit house, a man sits hunched over his desk. Papers are scattered around him like fallen leaves. Candles burn low. Ink stains his fingers. His wig sits crookedly upon his head.

This is Samuel Johnson—scholar, critic, poet—brilliant yet burdened.

The year feels long and unkind. Money is scarce. Illness lingers. Time presses in like a tightening fist. Yet Johnson writes—always writes—driven by something he barely understands himself: ambition, duty, fear of obscurity… perhaps all three.

His great poem, “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” occupies his thoughts. He labors over each line, reflecting on the tragic irony of human desire—how men crave wealth, fame, power, only to be crushed by them. The poem becomes a mirror, and Johnson does not like what he sees.

Across the room moves his wife, Tetty—older, frail, sharp-tongued, yet deeply attached to him. She coughs frequently. Her illness has become part of the furniture of the house. Johnson worries for her, though he expresses it awkwardly, often irritably. Love, in this house, does not come easily spoken.

They quarrel in small ways. About money. About visitors. About Johnson’s relentless work. Tetty longs for comfort, for reassurance. Johnson longs for accomplishment—perhaps for immortality. Their desires brush against each other like flint and steel.

Meanwhile, the outside world presses in.

London society whispers. Patrons hesitate. Publishers delay. The literary marketplace is unforgiving. Johnson dreams of recognition, of lasting impact—but the path is uncertain. The more he contemplates ambition, the more he senses its hollowness.

His poem grows darker as he writes.

He meditates on fallen kings, disgraced ministers, scholars driven mad by their own learning. He sees clearly: every human wish carries the seed of disappointment. Power breeds paranoia. Beauty fades. Wealth isolates. Fame invites envy.

Yet even as he condemns human desire, he cannot escape it.

Johnson wants success. He wants stability. He wants relief from anxiety. He wants Tetty to recover. He wants peace of mind. The irony is cruel and sharp—he critiques desire while being consumed by it.

Beckett’s fragment lingers in these moments of tension.

We see Johnson pacing at night, muttering Latin phrases, scratching revisions into his manuscript. We see Tetty watching him with a mixture of affection and resentment. We see a man wrestling not with society alone, but with himself.

There is no sweeping plot, no grand external climax. Instead, the drama is interior.

The real conflict lies between aspiration and futility, between faith and doubt, between the longing for permanence and the certainty of decay**.

Johnson senses that time will erase everything—his struggles, his works, even his name. The poem becomes his defiance against that erasure. Yet Beckett subtly suggests that defiance may itself be another futile wish.

In quiet moments, Johnson reflects on mortality. Death hovers nearby—not dramatically, but steadily. Tetty’s failing health is a reminder. His own melancholy shadows him. The house feels smaller each day.

Still, he writes.

Still, he hopes.

Still, he doubts.

Beckett does not offer resolution. The play remains a fragment—appropriately so. Human wishes themselves are fragments: incomplete, interrupted, forever reaching beyond their grasp.

The story closes not with triumph nor disaster, but with uncertainty. Johnson sits again at his desk. The candle flickers. The ink dries. Outside, London moves on, indifferent.

He finishes another line of the poem.

Whether it will grant him immortality—or merely prove his thesis about the vanity of human wishes—remains unknown.

And perhaps that is the point.