Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett (/ˈbɛkɪt/; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century.

Beckett's work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd."

Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation." He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.

Biography

Early life and education

The Becketts were members of the Anglican Church of Ireland. The family home, Cooldrinagh in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock, was a large house and garden complete with tennis court built in 1903 by Samuel's father, William. The house and garden, together with the surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby Leopardstown Racecourse, the Foxrock railway station and Harcourt Street station at the city terminus of the line, all feature in his prose and plays.

Sam Beckett

Dr. Samuel "Sam" Beckett is a fictional character and the protagonist on the science fiction television series Quantum Leap, played by Scott Bakula.

Initially, the audience knows very little about Sam, much as Sam knows little about himself due to holes in his memory dubbed the "Swiss cheese effect."

Backstory

Sam Beckett was born at 12:30 pm EST on August 8, 1953, in Elk Ridge, Indiana to dairy farmer John Samuel Beckett and his wife Thelma Louise Beckett. As a child, he had two cats, named Donner and Blitzen, but never had a dog. Sam was a child prodigy, learning to read at age 2 and do advanced calculus in his head at age 5. By the time he was 10, he could beat a computer at chess. Sam also played piano in a concert at Carnegie Hall when he was 19, plays guitar, is a good dancer, sings tenor, and his favorite song is John Lennon's "Imagine".

Sam has a photographic memory, an IQ of 267, likes dry or light beer, and microwave popcorn. Sam also knows several kinds of martial arts and has been afraid of heights since he was 9 years old. In his teen years, Sam's family was dealt a hard blow when his older brother, Tom, was killed in Vietnam on April 8, 1970, but Sam leaps into his brother's unit and saves him on that day. Tom (Thomas Andrew Beckett) was a good athlete, an All-State basketball player, an Annapolis graduate, is a Navy SEAL Commander, and has a wife named Mary. Sam has one sister named Katie (Katherine Elizabeth Beckett), born during a flood in 1957, whose first husband was an abusive alcoholic named Chuck. They divorced and she is now married to Navy officer Lt. Jim Bonnick. They have lived in Hawaii with Thelma Beckett since 1974.

Samuel

Samuel (/ˈsæm.juː.əl/;Hebrew: שְׁמוּאֵל, Modern Shmu'el, Tiberian Šəmûʼēl; Arabic: صموئيل Ṣamuil; Greek: Σαμουήλ Samouēl; Latin: Samvel; Strong's: Shemuwel), literally meaning "Name of God" in Hebrew, is a leader of ancient Israel in the Books of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible. He is also known as a prophet and is mentioned in the second chapter of the Qur'an, although not by name.

His status, as viewed by rabbinical literature, is that he was the last of the Hebrew Judges and the first of the major prophets who began to prophesy inside the Land of Israel. He was thus at the cusp between two eras. According to the text of the Books of Samuel, he also anointed the first two kings of the Kingdom of Israel: Saul and David.

Biblical account

Family

Samuel's mother was Hannah and his father was Elkanah. Elkanah lived at Rama-thaim in the district of Zuph. His genealogy is also found in a pedigree of the Kohathites (1 Chron. 6:3-15) and in that of Heman, his great-grandson (ib. vi. 18-22). According to the genealogical tables, Elkanah was a Levite - a fact otherwise not mentioned in the books of Samuel. The fact that Elkanah, a Levite, was denominated an Ephraimite is analogous to the designation of a Levite belonging to Judah (Judges 17:7, for example).

Samuel (Raffi novel)

Samuel (Սամվել Samvel) is an 1886 Armenian language novel by the novelist Raffi. Considered by some critics his most successful work, the plot centres on the killing of the fourth-century Prince Vahan Mamikonian and his wife by their son Samuel.

Translations

References

Samuel of Nehardea

Samuel of Nehardea or Samuel bar Abba (Hebrew: שמואל or שמואל ירחינאה) was a Jewish Talmudist who lived in Babylonia, known as an Amora of the first generation; son of Abba bar Abba and head of the Yeshiva at Nehardea. He was a teacher of halakha, judge, physician, and astronomer. He was born about 165 CE at Nehardea, in Babylonia and died there about 257 CE. As in the case of many other great men, a number of legendary stories are connected with his birth (comp. Halakot Gedolot, Giṭṭin, end; Tos. Ḳid. 73a s.v. Mai Ikka). In Talmudic texts, Samuel is frequently associated with Abba Arika, with whom he debated on many major issues. He was the teacher of Rabbi Judah ben Ezekiel. From the little biographical information gleaned from the Talmud, we know that Samuel was never ordained as a Tanna, that he was very precise with his words (Kidd. 70), and that he had a special affinity for astronomy: one of his best known sayings was that "The paths of heaven are as clear to me as the pathways of Nehardea."