Endgame Blog #4

While I read the play, I had originally thought that the answer to the “so what?” question was that the play was significant to a contemporary audience because it explored an apocalyptic future and may have acted as foreshadowing for society. However, while I was writing that, I started to realize that the play is significant to us today because it explores concepts that are universally important to any audience. Beckett’s Endgame provides an alarmingly accurate description of what death feels like as it approaches, a feeling that a man only truly experiences as he approaches the grave, evidenced by the interactions between Clov and Hamm in their bleak environment.

            The interaction between Clov and Hamm outwardly appear to be trivial or meaningless. They usually exchange words swiftly, with the conversation often deteriorating into bickering. In the bleak world that they inhabit, everything is grey and the only real stimulus they have is one another. Both characters fall into a very cyclical and monotonous routine. Upon examination, until the very end, neither character accomplishes anything, as if they are waiting for an inevitable end to hurry up and arrive.

Every time Clov looks outside to see if the world has changed at all, he is met with the despair of seeing nothing different. When Hamm asks him why he hasn’t left him yet, he lets the audience know that he can’t because he depends on certain resources that are in Hamm’s house. On the other hand, Hamm is alone as Nell and Nagg have died, and he is blind, rendering him unable to do anything for himself. Though seemingly in complete control, he is completely subject to Clov for help doing anything. He shows this on line 757 when he says, “But if you leave how shall I know?”

The most important passage of the play, I believe, is “Then one day, suddenly, it ends, it changes, I don’t understand, it dies, or it’s me, I don’t understand, that either. I ask the words that remain – sleeping, waking, morning, evening. They have nothing to say” (1407-1410). These words from Clov to Hamm right before they part ways are the point where the characters finally realize their unproductive cycles have reached an end. Clov has suddenly become aware that their routines have become so bland that words like morning and evening, waking and sleeping, very opposite nouns have all run together. He has no real concept of passing time and feels the need to finally break away. The lack of temporal awareness has also blurred the lines of life and death. He feels as though he has become so boring and empty that he can’t tell if he is alive, dead, awake, or asleep.

The play ends in the same way that one might imagine life does, ominous and alone. The curtain falls as Clov and Hamm separate, with the audience not knowing what will happen to either of them. Clov’s exit seems to be a metaphor for a happier end, with him finally casting off Hamm’s yoke and chasing the young boy, a possible symbol of hope, into the abyss. Hamm’s concluding scene seems to paint a picture of a sad death, one that is completely empty and alone. Behind him, his parents have died, and his only company, Clov, has run off to be free in his final moments. Hamm, still completely helpless, is left to face his end all alone, with no comfort from anyone else.

These two sides of the same coin, though incredibly dark, struck me in a way that no Hollywood depiction or video game content has been able to. Beckett’s “so what,” though a common theme across many different media, is able to carry an immense amount of impact because of its casualness.