Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde writer (a person who introduces new and experimental ideas and methods into art, music or literature), playwright, director theatrical, and poet. Best known for his play GoDot, he is sometimes considered the last of the modernists as well as the father of the postmodernist movement due to the influence his work had on many writers. Samuel Beckett was born on Good Friday, April 13, 1906, near Dublin, Ireland. He was the younger of two children born to William Frank Beckett, a surveyor, and May Barclay who was a nurse. He grew up in a middle-class home with Protestant backgrounds and attended a local preschool at the age of five. Not long after he moved to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, the same school Oscar Wilde attended. Beckett subsequently attended Trinity College Dublin from 1923 to 1927, during his time there he excelled in the studies of the modern languages, English, French and English. Italian. After gaining degrees in French and Italian, he began teaching at Campbell College in Belfast for two terms before moving to Paris. Arriving in Paris in 1928 he became lecteur d'anglais at the École Normale Supérieure. It was at this time that Beckett met lifelong friend James Joyce, an Irish novelist. Beckett published his first work in 1929, a critical essay entitled “Dante…Bruno. Vico… Joyce”, in which he defends the work of James Joyce. Beckett returned to Dublin from Paris to accept a teaching position at Trinity College. He graduated from Trinity College earning a Master of Arts; he resigned from his job at the College and traveled through Europe and Britain. During his travels he came across many hobos and hobos who......middle of paper......could (referring to his contribution as "boy scout stuff", and continued to work on the novel Watt.As the war was drawing to a close Beckett returned to Paris in 1945. He then visited Dublin for a short visit, whilst in his mother's room he had an epiphany which would have a dramatic impact on his future work Fearing the consequences of being in the shadow of James Joyce, Beckett realized that it was time to change the path he was following, which forced him to recognize both his interests and his stupidity, as the following quote highlights "I realized who Joyce was gone as far as possible in the direction of knowing more, [having] control of one's own material. He always added: just look at his evidence to understand that my way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, rather in subtraction than in addition."