Play Endgame by Samuel Beckett. The Writer

¶ … play "Endgame" by Samuel Beckett. The writer of this paper examines the theme, style and other elements of the play while examining the contextual and stylistic elements of the work. There was one source used to complete this paper.

Throughout history playwrights have used their work to illustrate the complicated foundation of human relationships. Whether it is a love story, a family story or another type of relationship, playwrights uncover the hidden emotions and nuances that come into play with regard to human love and hate. Samuel Beckett, who has been referred to by experts as one of the most talented playwrights in history, produced a classic piece of literature when he penned Endgame. Endgame underscores the pain and struggle that human relationships endure when founded in pain and human suffering. The two main characters in Endgame consist of a man who is chair bound and his lifetime caretaker. Beckett provides a perfect illustration of the embodiment of Modernism.

While the relationship between the sickly and the caretaker is used to explore the entire theme it is done in a manner that works. The caretaker seems to want to break away from the man in the chair but instead is driven from window to window at the man's command The illustration of modernism can be clearly picked out and defined if one knows how to examine the play for its elements.

Hamm is the actual illustration of Modernism with Clove acting as a springboard for the illustration. Hamms way of speaking, his actions and the fact that he is slowly decaying all provide a perfect example of Modernism and the problems that Modernism has encountered along the way. Beckett uses the character of Hamm to depict many aspects of modernism including the long and drawn out journey. Hamm portrays the Modernism through many avenues but two of the most important elements are his tired and pestilent nature.

For one to see the way the play presents an example of Modernism and its struggle against Romantisism one only has to look at the relationship between Hamm, Nell and Nagg. Hamm's reactions to both of them is a classic illustration of the struggle between Modernism and Romanticism. The threatening and being threatened that occurs between the characters presents a metaphoric example of the struggle Modernism launches against Romantcism.

The character of Hamm provides many examples of the fight against Romanticism by Modernism. Hamm shows anger and disgust for the two which is the way of Modernism against Romanticism. If one has a difficult time exploring the theme of Modernism as it is illustrated through the relationship between Hamm and Nagg and Nell one can view it as a teen fighting against a parent. As teens grow older and start becoming young adults of their own they naturally tend to fight against the parents who have raised them. This path is taken for the purpose of the teen eventually emerging as a self propelled and capable adult who still uses certain elements that the parents have provided along the way. This is something that most people can understand because it is a natural and healthy progression from life, though being in the throes of the path either as the parents or the child it can be extremely stressful. This is the same situation that occurs in the play Endgame by Samuel Beckett. Hamm fights against Nell and Nagg in an attempt to break free, though that will never be completely possible because of the situation.

Just as Modernism fights against Romaticism and teens fight against their parents Hamm fights against Nagg and Nell with anger and rudeness. The outburst are not so much aimed at them however, but aimed at the anger of his entrapment of the past and his situation. He is frustrated and aggravated in his inability to totally be sufficient without them and this is also a metaphoric example of the struggle of modernism to break away from Romanticism with none of its lingering elements left behind.

Hamm addresses Nell and Nagg through that frustration and refers to them as accursed progenitor (Beckett 9).

In modern times one can easily see the same type of conflict. Modern medicine now allows people to live longer than ever before, and with that agiing comes something often referred to as being crotchety. This is when the old person argues and snaps at others with seemingly no basis. It is illustrated ten fold in the play Endgame through the frustration of a chair bound person.

Hamm also represents Romaticism throughout the one act play because of his decline and decay. In a manner similar to the decline of romanticism Hamm is decaying physically and its path parallels the path taken by modernism in its fight against romanticism.

Here again the paradoxical situation of Nagg and Nell's unlived yet living life and their seemingly perpetual death is taken up in Hamm's condition, especially in the relationship between physical decay as a symbol of lost potency and productivity and his failed attempt to finish his own story. As the combination of decay and life in the physicality of Hamm serves to underline his impotency and thereby the impotency of Modernism, so does his continually "unfinished" story seek to illustrate how Modernism resists the ultimate death or termination, both as a literary genre and as a source of artistic production (Reading Beckett's Endgame as an Allegory of Literary Decay