Although this play is unlike many of the others we have read, it has its own purpose. Samuel Beckett uses this play to symbolize the cycle of life, to emphasize that death is inevitable, and to delve into the boring routine that we become accustomed to. While this play has no exposition, no rising action, and no real climax, this is all for a purpose: to focus on the end of the game. If you really study the way Beckett presents the play and the context he chooses, you will see what it is that he's trying to teach, which I think was his main purpose for writing this play the way he did.
One of the main ideas of the play is that life is like a cycle, a game, a routine. While Beckett's focus was not on the beginning or middle of the cycle, you can infer that the analogy being made is similar to one of those. There is an emphasis on the routine aspect of life with the monotonous conversations and speaking that occurs during the play. There is a lack of emotion and excitement, and there seems to be more of a boring blur of time wasting, simply waiting for the end to come. Not only is there an abundance of pauses between speaking which is another emphasis of the monotone conversations, but it is evident through the words the characters speak to each other. However, there is a sense of irony present, because in some instances, it seems as though the conversations are what keep the characters going from day to day.
Lines 1022-1033
Clov: I'll leave you.
Hamm: No!
Clov: What is there to keep me here?
Hamm: The dialogue. (Pause.)
I've got on with my story. (Pause.)
I've got on with it well. (Pause.)
Ask me where I've got to.
Clov: Oh, by the way, your story?
Hamm: What story?
Clov: The one you've been telling yourself all your days.
Hamm: Ah you mean my chronicle?
Clov: That's the one. (Pause.)
This is an occurrence of the irony present. Although the conversations between the characters seem to be a bore of simply waiting for their lives to end, they make it known that those same conversations are what keep them going. This is important to the play because it serves as another symbol; friendship and relationships with others may be a sole reason for continuing to live, and they may sometimes be just enough to keep you pushing on day after day.
There is another main point of the play that death is simply inevitable, and no matter what you do, it will come eventually. This is the main focus of Beckett's writing, hence the title. The characters in the play have experienced their glory days, the best days of their life, and they are now on a downhill glide towards the end of their time. It seems as though they are sitting around waiting for their clocks to take their final tick, knowing that they simply don't have much else to look forward to with no more bright light coming into their lives. They even reach a point when they are ready for death to take them away, and will do anything to get there.
Lines 1341-1352
Clov: Let's stop playing!
Hamm: Never!
Put me in my coffin.
Clov: There are no more coffins.
Hamm: Then let it end!
With a bang!
Of darkness! And me? Did anyone ever have pity on me?
Clov: What?
Is it me you're referring to?
Hamm: An aside, ape! Did you never hear an aside before?
I'm warming up for my last soliloquy.
These lines were a significant conversation between these two, because this is the point in which they were ready to accept death and let it take them away. They were ready for their cycle of life to end, their game to be over, and they were welcoming death the best way they knew how.
Although this play had many differences from the plays we were accustomed to reading and studying, the differences were important and had a purpose. They helped to focus on the themes of the play and the ideas Samuel Beckett was trying to teach us. Symbolism was used most frequently throughout the play, and the title was the most significant symbol of the entire work.
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