He dealt with human beings in such extreme situations not because he was interested in the sordid and diseased aspects of life but because he concentrated on the essential aspects of human experience. The subject matter of so much of the world’s literature–the social relations between individuals, their manners and possessions, their struggles for rank and position, or the conquest of sexual objects–appeared to #Beckett as mere external trappings of existence, the accidental and superficial aspects that mask the basic problems and the basic anguish of the human condition. The basic questions for Beckett seemed to be these: How can we come to terms with the fact that, without ever having asked for it, we have been thrown into the world, into being? And who are we; what is the true nature of our self? What does a human being mean when he says ‘I’?

Martin #Esslin

[Beckett](https://web.archive.org/web/20080705112042/http://media.ucsc.edu/classes/thompson/beckett.html)