– (presumably the minister?) – but only “half hearing what he’s saying.” Confusion as to whose funeral gives way to indication that the funeral is of a woman, very likely that of his mother(?). The fact that Speaker corrects himself, “his way” becoming “Her way”, suggests that the death of this female loved one is perhaps the critical event of this partial and oblique story. Or, more accurately, the attempt to speak of this specific event and renounce it from memory is the most significant behaviour represented in the narrative.” The text fragments from this point on. The narrator jumps back and forth from the funeral to the window to the lamp to the wall to his birth. The action does progress somewhat however: in the first mention of the funeral the grave is empty, in the second the coffin is “out of frame” and in the third the coffin is “on its way.” Interpretations “[One] of Freud’s theories that had an impact on Beckett because it reinforced his own experience was that the agony of birth induced a primal anxiety in human beings.” Beckett claimed to have remembered his time in utero along with his own painful birth. The word ‘birth’ preoccupies Speaker. He returns to it over and over again describing graphically at one point, in as great a detail as he does the lighting of the lamp, how the word is said. This is an important moment and one that caused Beckett major problems when he came to adapt the piece into French since “no similar word is vocalised in this way in French.” This resulted in his omitting whole passages and “reduced the piece to a free version, shorter, entitled Solo.” “Parting the lips is both a condition for and a result of pronouncing the plosive consonant “b”; thrusting the tongue forward, more precisely, pushing it out through the parted lips and teeth, describes in turn the action involved in pronouncing the sound “th”… This connection links the parting of lips and thrusting forward of the tongue, necessary for the articulation of the word “birth,” with the actual act of birth. In other words, the pronunciation of this word is simultaneously the image or symbol of that which it signifies.” There is also the familiar mathematical precision, which provides a structuring order to the old chaos. Not for the first time Beckett plays on the number