ENGLISH LITERATURE

Beckett's Endgame

Beckett's Endgame

Introduction

Beckett's Endgame is a play that is centred around the theme of chess, since the term Endgame itself is used to describe the observation of a game in which the players calculate the outcome of the play. Endgame is about the various stages of life, and how the inevitable outcome is death, but before it arrives, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. In this paper, I will be analyzing the play through an eco critical examination.

Discussion

When one utters the term “Endgame, it is used to describe when a chess game is ended and the outcome is already plain. In the game of chess, masters are often known to study the game thoroughly before making a move in order to ensure victory. Since Beckett was an avid chess player and a fan, he connected the game to his theories, such as the stages and end of life itself. According to him, death is the final outcome of life and has to arrive regardless of how one has lived their life, or planned their moves. Death awaits every man or woman, which is what Beckett has based his story around. The notion of chess is used in the play through representation of chess colors, since the characters of Clov and Hamm are red which Nagg and Nell are white. In a play, stage settings are always important, and have been linked to the likelihood of the play being successful or not. In the play, two windows are set on the back wall that form eye sockets of a skull, while the characters seem to represent brain and memory. In this way, the stage goes through the stages of what an aging mind may go through, a concept very sophisticated and ahead of its time. Dante's inferno is linked to this skull-like setting of the stage. For instance, when Clov claims that they seem to be residing in a refuge between earth and sea, Hamm comments “That here we're down in a hole”. In the play, it is later observed that the sun is sinking, and one of the character exclaims that they are sinking “down among the dead”, and that beyond the hills surrounding them, there” is the…other hell”. As is the case in Dante's inferno that the characters are doomed for eternity to repeat their offenses that led them into hell, Beckett uses the same imagery as he relates the crimes to being viewed as stages of life, signifying that we are meant to live life repeating out mistakes forever. In Endgame, the main outcome that seems inevitable is that Clov will eventually leave Hamm and although their relationship is based around the concept of slave/master and father/son, there is a mutual benefit involved in the relationship. Hamm is the provider of food and shelter, which Clov ensures the provision of legs and eyesight. One of the main reasons why Hamm is apprehensive about Clov leaving is that he will no longer be provided with food ...