Endgame by Samuel Beckett - Essay Example

? (Assignment) Book Reviews Endgame (Samuel Beckette, 1906-1989) Endgame (1957) is a one-act-play written by Samuel Beckette in French and later on translated into English by himself. It was a play with four characters written in a style related with the Theatre of the Absurd, which relies heavily on existential philosophy. The play is centered on the character of Hamm, an aged and blind person who is not able to stand up. He has a servant Clov, who cannot sit down, both living by the sea. As the play progress both the characters, mutually dependent are depicted as fighting for years. Hamm’s parents, who are legless, come to the play as living in rubbish bins downstage. The Endgame was revolutionary because it had not adherent to any accepted dramatic rules. Beckette did not accessorize the play or the characters but only used the circular dialogues. However, he creates a comprehensive fictional and greatly theatrical world for his character to live in. He is careful in choosing his words keeping the nature of the dialogue circular. 2. Hiroshima mon amour (Marguerite Duras, 1914-1996) Marguerite Duras is the author of the novel Hiroshima mon amour, which in 1959 became and acclaimed drama film. It tells the story of a French-Japanese couple and their passionate personal conversations about memory and forgetfulness. A French actress and a Japanese architect had a pithy relationship and now they are separating. As she departs, the two discuss their memory and forgetfulness as the bombing of Hiroshima broke their relationship and the perceptions of people inside and outside the event like, the effects of the Hiroshima bomb on the 6th of August, 1945 like the loss of hair and the complete anonymity of the surviving victims. After that he was called up for the Japanese army and then onwards his family was Hiroshima. The combined sufferings and rewards enabled the female characters to escape the no-win retreats. In the novel Duras illustrates beauty amidst destruction, which captures the attention of the reader by expressing pain, struggle, passion, and memory. 3. Requiem (Anna Akhmatova, 1889-1966) Requiem (1935-61) is a tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror written in intricately structured cycles by Anna Akhmatova, an acclaimed writer in the Russian literature. It is powerful memorial to the victims of the terror as well as to the relatives who waited outside prison for news. She wrote her poems taking epigraphs from other poems and novels, like Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. The poems portray the whole Russian nation as enslaved by Stalin and her grieves and struggles on the sentence of her son. Her reference to the Cleopatra’s children alludes to the arrest and imprisonment of the poetess’ son Lev Gumilev. The Cleopatra’s shedding tears before Augustus but in vain refers to Akhmatova’s unsuccessful attempts to win her son’s freedom by petitioning to the Soviet officials. Throughout the poem she images her own predicament in contrast to Cleopatra’s and in every case she plainly identifies her fate with the latter’s. 4. The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka, 1883-1924) The Metamorphosis (1915) is a significant work of short fiction novella by Franz Kafka. Gregor Samsa, the leading character of this novella, was a traveling salesman, who had no interest in going for work. One day he wakes and finds himself transformed into monstrous insect-like creature. He finds that is he is locked up in the room; his sister brings him milk with bread in it but he is repulsed by the taste. His father does not read out the newspaper for his family as he usually did; there is complete silence in the apartment. He want some one to come to his room but the doors are locked from outside and no one will enter. Gregor wants to help his family somehow. Her sister wanted to get rid of him from the house. Gregor realizes that his sister is right and he should disappear. He returns to his room, waits until sunrise, and dies. His family though mourns on his passing, is happy. This novella portrays the conflicted family that must learn to deal with a strange occurrence within the family and a man who retreats from the world to the four walls of his room where his family must take care of him now. Kafka has put the things in ordinary, everyday events, in an incredible absurd method which forces the reader to reread his work. 5. The Queen of Spades (Alexander Pushkin, 1799-1837) The Queen of Spades (1833) is a short story written by Alexander Pushkin, considered to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of the modern Russian literature. The story is around Hermann, officer of the engineers in the Imperial Russian army, who frequently watches his colleagues put money on cards but never tried himself. He learns about the old countess who had lost everything at cards but later acquiring the secret of three cards learned from the Count of St. Germain, she won it back all. He, determined to obtain the secret, sends love letter to Lizaveta Ivanova, the young ward of the countess. She lets him into the house and he threatens the old countess to tell him the secret. When she refused to do so, he draws the gun and the old lady dies of fear. At night her ghost comes to Hermann and reveals the secrets to him. He goes to gamble for high stakes, but loses everything on the third day. He goes mad and is locked up in an asylum, where he keeps muttering, ‘three, seven, ace! three, seven, queen!’. The story reveals the how drastic will be the end of greedy person. Hermann was not contented by his earnings but wanted more money, which ultimately landed him in asylum. Pushkin expresses his ideas on how a human being should be contented with what he has and earn by his sweat. 6. Confessions (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778) Confessions (1782), is the autobiography of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, covering the first fifty-three years of Rousseau’s life up to 1765, published four years after his death. The name ‘confessions’ unlike the autobiographies of Augustine’s own Confessions and Saint Teresa’s Life of Herself, which were the religious experiences of their authors, was not focused on any religious viewpoints. Rousseau wrote his own life typically in terms of his worldly experiences and individual feelings. He was aware of the unique nature of his work. It is a work which gives detailed description of the most humiliating and shameful moments in Rousseau’s life. His master piece describes his humility in him noticing how he reveals his five illegitimate children. Many writers after Rousseau wrote biographies using his style but those were far behind comparing the perfection of his work. 7. Odyssey (Homer) The Odyssey is on among the two ancient Greek epic poems written by Homer. The poem stands as a fundamental base to Western canon. Odyssey is placed in the second or in sequel to Iliad, another work of art attributed to Homer. The poem is centered on the collapse of Troy and thereafter the long journey back home of Greek hero Odysseus. In his absence, all thought him to be dead, whereas he had taken ten years to reach Ithaca while the Trojan War was on heat. His wife Penelope and son Telemachus had a hard time without Odysseus in dealing with the unruly suitors. Homer used some of the themes in his poem like temptation, disguise, and hospitality to convey the feeling of the characters to the readers. 8. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes) The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (Don Quixote) is a novel, the most influential work of Spanish Golden Age literature written by Spanish Author Miguel De Cervantes, published in two volumes, part I in 1605 and part II in 1615. The entire novel is adventure of a 50 year old man living in La Mancha. In the novel Cervantes depicts the adventures of Alonso Quixano, who changes his name before he started his journey. He lived with his niece and a housekeeper in the unnamed area of the country. He had strong belief in his ideas though many were impossible, but the people around him considered him to be out of mind. He stayed calm concentrating on his reading on books telling stories based on chivalry. Part I The Don Quixote is a long and complicated which is not easy to be put into a brief summary. In the part one of the novel he sets out on a journey and reaches an inn from were he was asked to quit on arising conflicts among the people. On the way from there he frees a boy who had been tied by his master for asking wages. And he returns home through another way where he was attacked. At home his niece and housekeeper had burned all the books on chivalry, but said all vanished by some magic. But that couldn’t stop him from further adventures. He went on for attacking on windmills that he believed to be ferocious giants. In his way he meets many persons like priests, soldiers, prostitutes, innkeepers and lovers. Quixote has the character of intervening into matters which do not concern him. He had never paid debts which caused him injuries and humiliations. Again he is forced to return home. Part II On the second part it is depicted as the people have read the story of Don Quixote and knows his history and squire. When they meet Quixote in person the scholars, duke and duchess and others made fun of him. They made cruel practical jokes and put him to many humiliating tests to check his devotion to Dulcinea. One scholar brought three dirty and ragged peasant girls and told him to find Dulcinea from them. At the end Don Quixote slowly returns to his sanity defeated and walked on. He now has no imagination, now he sees an inn as an inn not a castle. Don Quixote returns to his village having illness and depressed over the defeats and humiliations. Later on he fully recovers to his sanity and leads a peaceful life with his niece on the countryside. The structure of the novel is in episodic form, developed in the pacaresco style of the late 16th century. The novel is considered to be a parody of conventions, reality, and more nationalism. Cervantes has gone far ahead from mere storytelling to discovering the distinctiveness of his characters. Similarly he has been keen in Character naming. The name Don Quixote expresses an inversion, irony, and contradiction; it is also used as a reference to a horse’s rump. Thus the novel won a unique position between medieval chivalric romance and the modern novel. Read More