Looking for a guy who represents the shift from modernism to postmodernism?

You've found him in Samuel Beckett. He may have been a pal of James Joyce (who was one of modernism's head honchos), but from 1945 onwards, Beckett started to focus more and more on the failings of modernism, art, and language as a type of expression.

One of Beckett's main philosophical inquiries: in a world without meaning, how can a writer express themselves using words?

Yes, this is deep stuff, but Beckett's work isn't just made up of high falutin essays aimed at the beret and polo neck brigade. Instead, he produced some of the 20th century's most iconic dramas.

Oh, and get this: in a 1993 essay on the "death of postmodernism," Raymond Federman argued that postmodernism had died with Beckett in 1989. High praise or what?

Waiting for Godot

On the surface, the plot of this play might seem dull: a couple of guys, Estragon and Vladimir, spend the entire play waiting for another guy (that's Godot). It's true that there's not much to the plot, but it works as a springboard to explore the themes of waiting, hoping, and looking of meaning.

The verdict? Looking to the future and searching for meaning is pointless. After all (spoiler alert!), Godot never arrives. The characters do their best to pass the time, but ultimately, the play is circular. It was a really unconventional approach at the time, and even now, it's not something we see every day.

"Stirrings Still"

He might be remembered for his plays, but Beckett was no slouch when it came to prose. One of his final works, "Stirrings Still" (1988) is a rambling interior monologue that describes a man looking back on his life. (It's written in the third person, but it's hard not to imagine Beckett himself when you're reading it.)

This texts is typically postmodern: it uses repetitive language; it's written as a stream of consciousness; there's no real; technically, nothing happens; there's a lot of confusion and uncertainty…should we go on?

Despite facing the final curtain (dude's about to due), this guy doesn't offer any grand wisdom. Hardly a shocker, right? Rather than having any sense of order, "Stirrings Still" is full of contradiction, confusion, and fragments, as this guy sifts through the "hubbub in his mind." It may not be laugh-a-minute stuff, but it sums up Beckett's career postmodern-style.

Chew on This

How's about this for an enthralling plot? A couple of guys spend their days waiting for someone who never shows. Yeah, gripping stuff. Seriously, though, Waiting for Godot (1949) was massively influential when it burst onto the scene, refusing to go along with the usual dramatic conventions and becoming a pioneering example of the "Theater of the Absurd".

Want another slab of Beckett's dystopian vision? Endgame (1958) is one of those post-WWII texts in which the world has become an apocalyptic wasteland. Like Godot, this play deals with despair, suffering, and the difficulty (impossibility?) of finding meaning in the world. The characters have lost their sense of hope but they cling on all the same. We may not get any answers or happy endings, but we do get a classic study of the human condition.