Company Summary

"Company" is the first of Beckett's three novels, as well as the most traditional of them in form. In this short novel, a voice comes to a man who is lying on his back in the dark, and begins a narration of his present ("you are on your back in the dark," page 5) as well as his past. The man tries to figure out what is happening, and figures that the voice must be addressing someone, as it uses the second person, but not the first. However, it could be speaking to him, or to someone else; another, a 'hearer'.

The voice tells the man of his early life; how he made his mother angry, as a child, by talking about how far away the sky was. In addition, the story of his birth comes up, with his father walking down a road...