The Thorns of Becketts Endgame in modern or post-modern period - Essay Example

The Thorns of Beckett’s Endgame Introduction Beckett Theater is a revolutionary one. Beckett is not placed in modern or post modern period. His work is able to put him in a special and unique place between writers in his time. Beckett introduced a new theater to the world. His work is rejected at first because a lot have difficulty in understanding his work. He uses a little of everything in his plays’ setting, clothing, speech and even the character he creates. Beckett’s characters in most of his play tend to be poisoned in their places and in their bodies. The essential message of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is evident enough. This is certainly a drama about the final days of the world. The drama’s setting is portrayed several times as a ‘shelter’. There are not mentions of explosions but readers may think that some catastrophic event has occurred, as is portrayed in the following relevant scenes in the play. Life is all about misery and pain for Hamm and Clov. There was a time they thought Nagg was dead. Clov utters, “He’s crying” (Boxall 2003, 168). Hamm responds, “Then he’s living” (ibid, p. 168). The only woman, Nell, is already barren; hence she brings them no apprehension. An enigmatic boy, glimpsed from a porthole near the final stages of the drama, does embody a threat to total annihilation, yet if he stays outside the safe haven, he is certain to die. Since total annihilation seems quite favorable and all four protagonists are very wretched, why does none of them try to commit suicide? Hamm states, “… it’s time it ended and yet I hesitate… to end” (Boxall 2003, 161). Clov cannot kill Hamm even though Hamm implores him to do so. Clov desires to abandon the shelter, although it implies definite death, but at the drama’s final stages, even though fully clad and ready to go, he has decided not to leave. This mysterious attachment between the slave Clov and the master Hamm makes up the major issue of the drama. Their resenting relationship conflicts with that between Nell and Nagg, the disabled (legless) father and mother of Hamm, who live in the ash cans. Some of the critics, such as Davies (2009), suggest that this disability might be interpreted as loss of identity others believe it to be a representation of a social alienation and ignorance; others believe that Hamm’s blindness is an internal one. Several critics, hesitant or incapable of appreciating Beckett’s pronounced miserable perception of the malevolent senselessness of the universe, begin looking for more tolerable analyses or for ‘the nuances’ (Paladino 2009). The boy at the finale of the drama might, for one thing, unfamiliar to Clov and Hamm, embody a renewal of hope and life. I will be discussing the different interpretation of the disabled characters in Endgame and how can these philosophical interpretation of these character creates difficulty to the audience to understand the play and to the actors who acts these parts on stage. This essay also analyzes the application of language and different issues in the highly celebrated play Endgame by Samuel Beckett. Specifically, the representations of the disabled body and the existentialist nature of the play will be reviewed. Passages from the play will be employed throughout the essay to emphasize multiple themes. Particularly, these passages will be used to demonstrate how Beckett used ‘disability’ and his characters in Endgame. Interpreting the Disabled Characters in Endgame The most heartrending episode left uncompleted is the narrative of Hamm. He cannot end it as it is his life’s chronicle, and is apparently to unable to finish it while he is still breathing. Likewise, all Endgame’s characters suffer from a disability one way or another: Hamm is blind and crippled, being locked up to a wheelchair. Clov is not capable of sitting down, and Nell and Nagg are legless and are confined in ash bins. According to Popovich (1972), Beckett’s use of the disabled characters is encouraged by his fascination with the philosophy of Rene Descartes which involves the idea that there is a divide between the body and mind, and that this is only more visible in handicapped people. A further basis is that Beckett thought that the disability of an individual is an embodiment of the incapability of humanity to triumph in the game of luck that everybody should play with their destinies (Boxall 2003). It seems that Hamm’s blindness is his choice somehow. Hamm is rejecting his present and prefers to be blind so he would not be able to act or react to the things happening around him. This feature marks a negative person who chooses to be living in his dreams where he can dream with the things he cannot do and things he cannot find in his reality. Hamms creation here seems to be an internal one, that inner world peopled by the imagination of a blind man. Whereas Clov is concerned with the external, with the one physical setting itself--he speculates that "Theres nowhere else" (Boxall 2003, 142)--Hamms concern is that of "Text 2": "Perhaps were in a head" (ibid, p. 146). Deprived of a sense of perspective by his blindness, he can only think of man and, more specifically, of himself as the macrocosm. Appropriately, his speculation is that there is "no one else." For Hamm the external world is the illusion, in the most negative sense of that word: "Outside of here its death" (Boxall 2003, 77). At the start Hamm is asleep, his power of creation dormant. He may well be dreaming, for several times during the play he makes reference to the pleasures of this state. As in the medieval dream vision, he moves, after Clovs discovery, from sleep to waking, from dreams to the informing of his dreams. The source of that informing, as it was for the medievalist, is not ultimately the external world, for the vision, thus formed, is only an approximation of an internal state that, without art, cannot be known. Quiet, quiet, you’re keeping me awake. (pause) Talk softer (pause) If I could sleep I might make love. I’d go into the woods. My eyes would see…the sky, the earth. I’d run, run, they wouldn’t catch me. (Beckett 1994, 18). Nothing in the meticulously controlled world of Beckett is meaningless. The characters are embodiment of the final generation of humanity. They may be perceived as being the sole survivors of a globally catastrophic bombing, the body of Hamm gradually decaying (Rickert 1986). The murky, drab decoration being representative of the world’s miserable and ruined condition; the impairment of both Hamm and Clov could definitely have happened from a nuclear bombing. In contrast, Beckett might be recounting the outcome of World War II. It is fascinating to assume that the actions performed by Hamm and Clov are only part of an absurd pastime which they have created themselves. Beckett is pondering about the ridiculous nature of human life, how individuals perform empty routines every day. According to Paladino (2009) readers may gather additional clues, other similarities. Hamm is a blind person who narrates tales. If readers are visualizing Shakespeare, Hamm’s blindness is similar to the blindness of Lear; Hamm is always miserable, always in anguish, always persistently creating the humor of his verbal sphere. Or Hamm is similar to the ebbing God (Popovich 1972) of whom humanity has known from the time of Nietzsche: a supernatural being with a demiurge (who is Clov in the case of Hamm) who is overseeing the gathering of dogs and has not accomplished his task; and a sightless deity, furthermore, sightless and despotic, such as Fate. Or Hamm is similar to Godot. The Endgame has been tackled in opposition to no Endon, but in opposition to an unrelenting adversary who has grabbed each opportunity and has dominated the board. That to be human is to take part in a game against a persistent but totally just adversary was an allegory popularized by T.H. Huxley (Boxall 2003). Hamm challenges the contention that there is no more character by arguing that attrition’s role continues: “We breathe, we change! We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom! Our ideals!” (Beckett 1994, 11). “Then she hasn’t forgotten us,’ (ibid, p. 11) is the acknowledgment of Clov. The despair in Endgame, nevertheless, appears more than normal; the sea is extraordinarily peaceful. And the person in the chair does not swing himself into Nirvana, because the chair does not swing and Nirvana does not exist. Yet, there are reveries which evidently bring back a time when there were woodlands and when there was ‘love’: “If I could sleep I might make love. I’d go into the woods” (Beckett 1994, 18). The reveries of Murphy at their most agreeable exclude all the elements of the massive world for absolute entropic insipidness. The immense world of Hamm bends toward entropic insipidness, and he is delighted of reveries that bring back the old world. In other words, the immense world evolves like the dimension Murphy was delighted to envision, and there is no serenity in it, not any (Boxall 2003). This is not to say that the play relies in any way for its control on any suggestion to a narrative produced two decades prior, or on any understanding at all of the other novels of its author. It is superbly self-reliant, depending on what Beckett has precisely referred to as ‘the power of the text to claw’ (ibid, 82). It is an astounding accomplishment; even the predictabilities plunge with terrible weight. However, typically, attaining what it does, it uses over and over again ingredients the dramatist has used before: ‘the chess game, the man in the chair, the man telling himself a lifetime story, the master and servant equivocally related, the ritual cruelty on which no one comments because no expects better, the splendidly shaped sentences, the silences’ (Rickert 1986, 1). The most prevalent path is Pause, and the characters should be reverential of the unspoken. The audience of the Beckett norm can apparently discern contradictions and advances unattainable to the spectators who are attending just for this one recital of this one masterpiece. This is true for all the plays of Beckett. It is also factual that such an audience could be deceived, particularly when, as in the latter terse works, those go behind Endgame, the unusually small amount of components in force imposes his acknowledgment that he has met them ahead. He might simply think that Beckett only creates and recreates the same play, which is not the case. The author takes part in somewhat diverse games with the unchanged elements. To highlight the resemblances may inform, but resemblances should be stressed with care, in case we position ourselves in the place of presuming that having witnessed one game of chess. Each of the work of Beckett begins once more, a new brand of experience, a new masterpiece. There is attrition at all times, as there is in chess. The theatre of Samuel Beckett thus offers a new dimension of absurdity to the entire argument, a level of physical absurdity encountered on stage by the actor. In his process of confrontation with the script, Becketts actor demonstrates the problem, communicating through this challenge to his craft the uneasy situation which can only then be apprehended by his spectators. The experience of Becketts playwriting therefore presupposes a new method of interpretation for the actor. Within his familiar medium, now made unfamiliar to him, the actor must undergo physically on stage (not only emotionally) the same spirit of painful dislocation the man in the audience takes a lifetime to travel. The concrete situation the player confronts is, necessarily, much more portrayable than actable. Becketts theatre may be a profound madness (for the actor it is certainly maddening), but there seems to be a method to it--though the method called for is decidedly not Stanislavskys. Existentialism in Endgame Samuel Beckett, in Endgame, depicts the contemporary human bond as an estranging element (Boxall 2003). Although all characters seem to be inter-reliant, everyone abhors everybody else. Through Beckett’s use of soliloquy, a disquieting and sinister ambiance, and stage directions, the author reveals his perception of proximity of humanity’s end, life’s absurdity and the mutual relationships among people (Paladino 2009). The bond between Clov and Hamm is of the highest importance in the drama. Beckett portrays the relationship of Clov and Hamm as a manifold dimensional one, akin to that of king and soldiers, master and servant, and father and son, in a complex display of human mutuality. As is indicated in the heart of the drama where Hamm informs Clov, “It was I was a father to you” (Beckett 1994, 56), the reader grasps that the affiliation between Clov and Hamm is fundamentally that of a father and son. Nevertheless, the reader is given the idea that Clov is inevitably overwhelmed by a love-hate affiliation with Hamm given that we have no decisive clue as to whether Clov is adopted by or the own son of Hamm. More appropriately, Beckett portrays their bond as master and servant, since Hamm is handicapped, and relies on Clov to obey his requests (Boxall 2003). Because Clov constantly declares his plan to run off, he does not, not until the play’s finale where there remains no evident clue as to whether he is leaving permanently in spite the travelling outfit he is in. Basically, their bond is a mutual one. However, all actions of Clov are of importance to the king, his performance is hampered by his “stiff, staggering walk” (Boxall 2003, 91), and he needs to complete the commands of Hamm for he relies on him for “the combination of the larder” (ibid, p. 91). Their bond, in a figurative sense, also resembles that of a king and soldier, because with no soldier, there would be no sense for Hamm since he confronts the nearness of absolute defeat. Thus, Beckett elaborates the powerful connection between Clov and Hamm, like they were the very last of the human race and as though they “[begin] to… to mean something” (Beckett 1994, 58); specifically so as the final pieces of chess that are in the chessboard, knight and king. Clov takes his relationship with Hamm to a culmination when he abruptly becomes aggressive and strikes Hamm on the head. Beckett clarifies this with the statement of Clov to Hamm: “You drive me mad, I’m mad!” (Beckett 1994, 77) which puts their manifold relationships to an end, strengthening the notion of human estrangement. Likewise, the bond between Nell and Nagg as wife and husband is also significant in the drama. Beckett makes use of stage direction, “Their heads strain towards each other” (Beckett 1994, 14) when Nell and Nagg attempt to kiss and “They both turn away from each other” (ibid, p. 14) in disappointment, not just to demonstrate the incapability of Nell and Nag to kiss each other, but also strengthens the enormity of life’s absurdity when Nell and Nagg as wife and husband are made to live in rubbish bins for they are with no legs and paralyzed (Popovich 1972). Beckett produces heightening dreads for the audiences as they understand that Nell and Nagg are separated from each other although they laugh and reminisce together, “Do you remember--- when…” (Becket 1994, 52). The incongruity of their painful knowledge of how they become paralyzed and the passionate recollections of their engagement merely functions to amass the grand gloomy atmosphere about their approaching death. Criticisms of Beckett’s Endgame Beckett has been criticized for forcing actors into uncomfortable positions during the entire play, simply to convey his abstract ideas through disabled characters on the stage. For example, Enoch Brater’s essay discusses the case of Nell and Nagg in Endgame, and points that the actors are forced to spend the whole play on their knees or standing up in trashcans. Beckett tends to put his actors in these difficult, exaggerated positions because I think he likes what it forces to happen to the actor. The audience gets more when the actor is in such an extreme state of struggle,” Harrison ventured the idea behind putting these characters disabled in trash cans to portray the regression of the old generation.”Nagg and Nell, legless in their garbage cans, describe an earlier, more sentimental or romantic era” (worthen 430) “what remains of an older generation” (chon 478). In the intensely gloomy Endgame, Beckett describes a very anti-social character in the modern Western culture. As an embodiment of contemporary way of thinking Hamm sustains an existentialistic bond with nearly all the other characters, because his dread for a hatred of them makes them appear like a nightmare to him. The aesthetic style of Endgame moves readers’ interest from mind to awareness, particularly from the characters’ subjectivity to their own subjectivity and afar. Similar to Waiting for Godot, the protagonists surface in equal pairs and participate in a waiting game, at this point an endgame for the end of times (Boxall 2003). In referring to the end of times and all of its elements--- God, sun, laughter, weather, food, nature, colors, time, kisses, etc.—but considerably postponing this annihilation, Endgame indicates the likelihood of experiencing a combination of meaninglessness and completeness. Poststructuralists assert that the merging of beginnings and finales in the drama states our incapability of attaining the goal of consciousness, of seeing its emptiness (Davies 2009). Clov and Hamm wish for peacefulness and serenity they can never have, for the world’s movement never stops. It appears they want not so much to end the flow of activities permanently, the innate function of the mind, but to find an innate context for driving out the flow, which merely absolute consciousness can give. Instead of traditional setting, plot, and characterization, the play focuses on the heart of human existence (Paladino 2009). If Clov and Hamm embody the two parts of a sole persona, then the fundamental duality of the mind is not the divide between emotion and intellect, unconscious and conscious, and irrational and rational—all of which are part of the material sphere of the mind (Popovich 1972). Instead, the central duality of the human mind is the divide between mind and perception or, as stated by Sylvie Henning, “mind and soul” (Boxall 2003, 103). However, although we differentiate Clov and Hamm between these two facets, they also represent, as persons, distinct manifestations of this absolute duality within their own selves. Symbolically, the steady advance of demise in the world enveloping their shelter portrays the retreating consciousness of human experience. An awareness-by-identity of one’s own self outside of object/subject duality exactly requires the discarding of the material dimension, an essential death that encompasses the mind and intellect (Davies 2009). Each one of them hangs on to the role he adopts for the sake of having a role because in that way each asserts a kind of identity by acting upon one another. Hamm and Clov depend on each other because they both have physical disabilities; Hamm is crippled and blind hence Clov wheels him around the room, and reports on the outside by looking out of the window. Clov can see and walk but he cannot sit. Clovs inability to sit is compensated with the fact that Hamm is confined to sitting in a wheelchair. Conclusions A play is a world where a playwright relies on the reenactment of the interconnections between and among the thematic content, form, and function. One type of form and function is deliberately chosen to strengthen and explain one specific theme chosen by the dramatist. Beckett’s application of symbolic characters and tedious sequential development triumphs in reinforcing the senselessness of life, death, loss of faith, helplessness, and horror which come together to depict the status of contemporary humankind in a world imperiled by nuclear warfare. To discuss the language usage first, Beckett makes use of repetitive conversations and hollow clichés to demonstrate the breakdown of communication. The miseries of every person are contained within himself and his effort to express them fails severely. Individuals cannot understand each other accurately and the effect of terror and the vicious activities of humankind are revolting. Beckett, through the exploitation of minimal language, expresses the incapability to communicate expressively. Numerous of the expressions made use by the characters denote extinction, death, lack of mobility and humorous events in the contemporary world. The play’s setting is a sealed room representing the incapability of the contemporary individual to move without restraint. The characters are bonded to particular things. They are handicapped and reliant upon other people for their actions or movement. It is a representation of the captivity of modern humanity. The play’s characters accomplish nothing throughout the play. They endure from sluggishness and the play closes where it opened. By making use of handicapped characters Beckett made the entire endeavour difficult, not only for the audience, but also for the actors. References Beckett, S. Endgame and Act without Words. New York: Grove Press, 1994. Boxall, P. Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot-Endgame. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Davies, M. Someone is looking at me still: The Audience-Creature Relationship in the Theater Plays of Samuel Beckett. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 51.1 (2009): pp. 76-93. Paladino, A.M. The Phenomenal Presence of Invisible Legs: Beckett and the Actor. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University, 2009. Popovich, H.H. Hamm: Beckett’s God in Nagg’s Image. South Atlantic Bulletin, 1972. Rickert, B.M. Major Modern Dramatists: Norwegian, Swedish, French, Belgian, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, and Polish dramatists. Michigan: Ungar, 1986. Read More