6/30/2023 0 Comments Ho ho hopefully tried and trued![]() ![]() ![]() Or they might not.Īs with any other work of fiction, readers only get out of Beckett’s text as much as they put into it. It’s left up to us, perhaps, to fill in the blanks surrounding these three figures.Īs with many of Beckett’s other works, there’s a great deal of disagreement over what Worstward Ho! actually “means.” The woman, man, and child might be symbolic of stages in the human condition. Readers who support the theory that Worstward Ho! is a novella point out that this text is mainly about an old man, an old woman, and a child visiting a graveyard. What Does Worstward Ho! Even Mean?Ī few literary critics have tried to classify Worstward Ho! as a novella, but it’s quite difficult to make out a clear plot in this text. You can also see the unreliability of language as “word” almost slips into “worse” in this quote. This phrase succinctly encapsulates Beckett’s later minimalist aesthetics. “With leastening words say least best worse. Later in the piece, Beckett writes the following: It’s not quite clear, but some people see the theory of reincarnation in this work, just as “metempsychosis” is a major theme in Joyce’s Ulysses.Īnother important theme in Worstward Ho! (again, something skipped over in the famous Samuel Beckett quote) is the narrator’s lack of faith in language. While the phrase “Westward Ho!” is associated with expansion, growth, and great optimism for the future, Beckett’s title reminds us that, ultimately, we are all journeying “worstward” towards the grave… ![]() The title of Worstward Ho! is a riff on the 19th century novel Westward Ho! by the English novelist Charles Kingsley, offering a very contrasting view of life. Beckett’s narrator seems to be trying to work out the paradox of emptiness and presence, of birth and death. In many ways, this text can be seen as an extended meditation on the inexplicable nature of being and not-being. Indeed, far from encouraging techie CEOs to achieve their greatest potential, Beckett’s primary obsession in Westward Ho! is “the void”: The “Dim Void:” Beckett’s Worstward Ho!Įxcept for this one “fail better” quote, nearly every other snippet from Westward Ho! reflects the real Samuel Beckett: brooding, morbid, and completely avant-garde. Not failure as a necessary path toward riches, or fame, or ( everyone’s favorite buzzword) “innovation.” Just failure. “The entrepreneurial fashion for failure with which this polished shard fits so snugly is not really concerned, as Beckett was, with failure per se-with the necessary defeat of every human endeavor, of all efforts at communication, and of language itself-but with failure as an essential stage in the individual’s progress toward lucrative self-fulfillment.”Īs O’Connell notes, Samuel Beckett was interested in failure, full stop. Mark O’Connell, a writer for Slate, describes the ironic meme-ification of the “fail better” quote like this: In Beckett’s bleak worldview, life is already a grand failure (or a tragi-comedy, if you’d prefer) in which we are all, like the narrator of Worstward Ho!, sitting in an inexplicable “dim void.” The fact that this Samuel Beckett quote has been taken so far from its original roots is pretty fascinating. Not exactly inspiring, right? The Meme-ification of the “Fail Better” Samuel Beckett Quote In fact, it seems that the only recompense Beckett’s narrator can come up with for the absurdity of existence is to “fail better” the next time. Good and all.”Īs this markedly darker snippet of text demonstrates, Worstward Ho! seems to have nothing to do with positivity, motivation, or progress. Here’s the continuation of that Samuel Beckett quote, the part that immediately follows the famously catchy bit (our emphasis added): Is the “Fail Better” Quote Really Inspirational? Fail better.”īy itself, you can probably understand why this phrase has become a mantra of sorts, especially in the glamorized world of overworked start-up founders hoping against pretty high odds to make it.Įven outside of the business development niche, this quote does sound inspiring. The “fail better” quote was originally published in Samuel Beckett’s short piece of prose entitled Worstward Ho!, his second-to-last work ever published. The full Samuel Beckett quote reads like this (and by “full,” we really mean the part that gets repeated): You may not have known that this quote comes from Irish author Samuel Beckett, but there’s no doubt you know the words.Įven if you aren’t involved in tech, entrepreneurship, lifehacking, or other such digital-age ubiquities, you’ve probably heard the most famous part of this Samuel Beckett quote: “Fail better.” The “Fail Better” Quote by Samuel Beckett Today we’re featuring a Samuel Beckett quote that has gained immense popularity in recent years. ![]()
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