great works ii – 2850 jta 12:25-2:05: love letters from the world

Stephen:

It is evident that the theme of nihilism is present in Beckett’s Endgame. The characters in Endgame are caught in an unsolvable situation. Hamm is blind and immobile and Clov is seemingly, forever enslaved to Hamm. Nell and Nagg are trapped in trash bins. So it seems like that everybody is entrapped in an unfortunate circumstance and they cannot escape from it. Similarly, in Mallarme’s poem, a swan is able to “shake free of [its] agonies,” but the pain and suffering will never truly go away. It is now a part of the person’s experience. “The horror of the earth will remain,” means that the daunting past may come back again in the future to haunt you again. And this ties back to nihilism because supposedly, life is meaningless and we can never “beat” or “win” it. Life itself, is a constant cycle of struggle. Being born into this world will only mean more suffering for the person.

Davida:

Stephen, your observation in regards to indicating the theme of nihilism was accurate. While you focused on the characters in Endgame, I would like to emphasize the setting. Throughout Beckett’s Endgame, Hamm would ask Clov about the changes occurring outside of their current location, a room. In response, Clov would report back that everything around was zero, motionless, and dead, as always. Similarly, in the poem, “The horror of the earth” that the swan was engulfed in comes to show that the environment in which both the swan and the characters in Endgame existed would not change, would always remain the same. “The land in which to exist” that the swan desires for does not seem to ever become a reality, and just as the characters in Endgame fail in their search for that purpose in life, the swan does not attain it either. The video touches up on these aspects too considering the setting throughout the video is empty, blank. The contents that appear in the room in the video are there, but they do not change since the “hard lake is haunted beneath the ice.”

Fritz:

Davida makes a valid claim, yet aspects of absurdism are also evident in Endgame. Clov is the hopeless swan who wished and longed for that little speck of happiness, but could never attain it or see it. The swan in the poem is “struggling to resist,” Clov begins to experience regret for not having imagined or “sung” a song about a world which to exist in. From what was shown in the video, it was apparent that the creator longed for a speck of happiness, as well. The video would change angles, alternate scenes by showing different part of the room, yet his dream of finding that content state did not appear. With the eerie music in the background and the dark atmosphere, the video implied that the purpose in life was nowhere to be found, hidden or not, it did not exist. Yet, the hope to find it did not seize to exist.

Brian:

My group members successfully touched up on themes that I agree with. Also, the moods that are portrayed through the short film Breathe and the poem Virginal, Vibrant and beautiful dawn are similar in that they both deal with struggle, endurance and a sense of being stagnant. The static objects in Breathe along with the audio cues of an individual’s hard inhale/exhale give an idea of unhappiness or fatigue. This idea is expanded upon in the poem where the swan endures winter for an unknown reason in which the poem ponders upon. Similarly, this reflects onto Endgame since the these moods existed in Beckett’s play too. Hamm’s constant outbursts of telling his roommates to talk lower caused the audience to see the struggle and inability to ensure that he was so experiencing.