Endgame as an absurd play.

      Beckett’s play Endgame belongs to the theatre of the Absurd as it views life as meaningless and beyond human rationality to understand. It shows the influence of existentialist philosophy. With its emphasis on the idea of circularity and non-meaning Endgame highlights the theme of absurdism. The play is both tragic and comic at the same time. One of the characters describes the experience of unhappiness as funny. It is absurd when one says that nothing is as funnier as unhappiness. The minimal use of language, minimalist use of setting, self-consciousness of characters and the fact that nothing happens in the play support the labeling of the play as absurdist one.
    The very beginning of the play gives us the word finished. It shows the character’s preoccupation with death. Since there is no meaning in life they are obsessed with death. The characters too are doing nothing. The setting shows imprisonment of people who can have no control over their won lives. They can not move freely. Their lives are manipulated by some external force. There are no values and beliefs by which they can live. The conversation is full of comic overtones. The play ends where it began. There is no development in the plot. Nothing can help to bring out the existential angst of the characters so silence is better than speech. When there is any speech it too is senseless and repetitive. The play shows the pain of life without expressing it. Hamm takes painkiller to mitigate the pain of life. He and Clov know what they are doing and the audience also knows it. Though the play goes against the conventional idea of drama it is intellectually appealing as it deals with the meaninglessness of life which makes the play absurd.

Death in Endgame.

    Endgame is an absurdist play as it deals with the theme of meaningless life. Finding life devoid of any significance the characters are mostly pre-occupied with the idea of death. They can not be certain of anything in life except death. No matter how people play the game of life the only final outcome about which they can be dead sure is death. Death is the central issue around which the whole play moves. Nell is the only female character in the play and she is also the one who dies in the course of the play. The death of female character who is the source of life makes death the dominant idea in the play.
    When the play begins we find the word ‘finished’. The word finished refers to the end of the world or the termination of life. All the characters in the play are dependent upon others for their existence. They are not free. The words they use to talk to others are repetitive and cannot communicate anything significant. The setting is a suffocating confinement of a room symbolically standing for the imprisonment of life. The activities of the characters and their dialogue do not sound life enhancing but support the idea of the negation of life. The characters don’t find life of that kind worth living but are trying to find the way out of it. The recurrence of words like zero, finished, nothing shows the characters preoccupation with death. When a flea is seen they want to kill it because life may begin all over again thereby prolonging the same cycle of pain, suffering and confinement. The characters do not seem to have control over their own lives but find themselves controlled and manipulated by some unseen power. Read More...

Discuss about the style and techniques in Endgame by Samuel Beckett.

    A play is a space where a dramatist depends on the dramatization of the interrelationships between and among the styles, techniques and the thematic content. One kind of style and techniques is purposefully chosen to corroborate and support one particular theme picked up by the playwright. Beckett’s use of repetitive chronological development and symbolic characters succeeds in supporting the theme of horror, stagnation, powerlessness, death, meaninglessness of life and a loss of faith and emptiness which come together to characterize the condition of modern man in a world threatened by nuclear wars.
    To talk about the language first, Becket uses meaningless clichés and repetitive dialogues to show the failure of communication. The agonies of every individual are locked within himself and his attempt to communicate them to others fails badly. People can’t understand each other well and the impact of horror and the destructive activities of man are unspeakable. Through the use of minimal language Beckett communicates the inability to communicate meaningfully. Many of the words used by the characters refer to the lack of mobility, endings, death, extinction and comic situations of life in the modern world. The setting of the play is a closed room signifying the inability of the modern man to move freely. The characters are tied to certain things. They are physically unfit and dependant upon others for their movement. Hamm cannot move without help from Clov. Clov too cannot move beyond the bounds of the room though he is the only character who moves more than any other character in the play. They are like the chess pieces and cannot move the way they like. Their movement is highly restricted. Nagg and Neil are in the ashcan and cannot come out. It is an allusion to the imprisonment of modern man. The chess pieces can move only in a given way. The rules of the game impose restriction on their movement. It seems as if the movement of the characters is preprogrammed and cannot move the way they please.
    The names of the characters refer to nails and hammer. Through this Beckett could possibly be trying to refer to the nations participating in the war. They are the builder of the world with their won tools but they cannot build the world but destroy it. The characters in the play accomplish nothing during the course of the play. They suffer from stagnation and the play ends where it began. By using characters with physical deformities the playwright may be referring to the spiritual paralysis which is so very characteristic of the modern world. Unlike the conventional notion of plot, Endgame has no clear cut beginning, middle and ending. At the end of the play things are where they were in the beginning. It symbolically stands for the lack of evolution and progression in the life of modern people and the world as a whole. Read More...