In Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame, he creates a setting that is dark and dull in an attempt to portray the tone of the play to the reader. The setting of the stage is crucial for people who are recreating Endgame to present a modern day version of the play because of their undertones. The stage should be likened to a skull with two windows on the back wall forming the eye sockets of this skull while the characters represent the brain and memory. By setting up the stage like this it creates an atmosphere where the stage is serving as a metaphor for an aging mind, helping to depict the nihilistic worldview that Beckett is trying to represent, which rely more on feeling then philosophy.

The worldview that Beckett proposes in Endgame is a nihilistic viewpoint that depicts modern man’s sorry state in a world without transcendence. Nihilism argues that life is without objective meaning purpose or intrinsic value. Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is a play about nothing whose characters lack the ability to move forward with their mundane lives. The story is told in fragments and the dialogues in the play are often interrupted by yawns, pauses and coughs. The play can be a different experience based on the person reading or performing it because a lot of the flow in the play relies on pausing and reading lines with emotion or lack thereof.

An example from the text that highlights the nihilistic tone in the play is when Hamm is asking Clov in the beginning of the play if anyone has more misery then him and is complaining to Clov about the situation he currently finds himself in. In the middle of this dialogue, Hamm yawns in the middle of the word absolute breaking the word into two portions. A (yawn) bsolute. Hamm’s negative connotation about absolute power and the existence of a higher power sets the tone for the rest of the play. Beckett wants us to look at his characters from a nihilistic worldview in which we should deny any possibility of knowledge, reality, value and beauty.

Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is enclosed with absurdism, nihilism, and pessimism. The link between these beliefs is the concept of nothingness. To depict this, Beckett made use of empty, repetitive dialogue, a twisted bare setting, and the lack of an obvious climax. To come to the point, Beckett utilized the components of traditional theater (plot, character, setting, dialogue) to a minimum. This helps to facilitate the notion that straightforward beginnings and straightforward endings don’t prevail. Instead, beginnings and endings are connected, generating cyclicity. The title itself, Endgame, incorporates this, as the endgame is the final stage of a chess game when few pieces remain and the end is in sight although the plays need to be finalized in spite of that. When Hamm awakens, his first words are, “me to play,” as if he is a pawn and his existence is the chess game. He instantly commands Clov to get him ready for bed, his armchair, after he scrutinizes his sufferings. This pessimism conveys what it is like to be alive, diminishing in the direction of death in a world without meaning. It examines the reality that existence and life is not pleasant and grand as humanistic texts indicate. In place of this “pleasantry” and “grandness” is the thought that existence and life is a dreadful duty to go through, hence why Hamm expresses his desire to sleep as soon as he came to (awakened). The characters in Endgame give rise to the apprehensiveness and incompatibility of human relationships in a world of absurdism in which human beings exist in a meaningless and disorderly world. Hamm and Clov are in conflict with one another all the time. There is a general cruelty between the characters – Hamm’s parents are kept in ash bins. This idea is, without doubt, absurd and illogical. However, this absence of love and warmth is all over in Endgame. For example, Hamm stated he would feed Clov just enough to keep him from dying. Clov also stated he won’t kiss Hamm anywhere or give him his hand when Hamm held out his hand. Only Nagg and Nell make an effort to kiss but fail to meet because of the obstruction of the ash bins. All in all, Beckett’s Endgame employed darkness (setting), minimalism, and reductionism (fragmented and interrupted dialogue) as postwar literature did because catastrophes are hard to put into words. Meaninglessness in Endgame alleviates the sufferings of the four characters and their existence is lessened to survival (food, shelter, sleep, and Hamm’s painkiller). When other existence is located in their shelter (the flea, the rat), it is exterminated.  

Samuel Beckett describes the world as empty and dark in his play, Endgame. We are in a way alienated from the world because we can’t fit in. There is no meaning to life as people do not know themselves and their nature. They suffer for no reason but at the same time there is no “cure” for this pain. However, being with someone helps minimize that pain. In the play, Clov and Hamm doesn’t have a happy relationship with one another but they still end up being together. Hamm provides Clov food and shelter whereas Clov is like the legs and eyes for Hamm. On page 769, Hamm asks Clov why does he stay with him and Clov asks him back why do you keep me. Hamm then replies that there’s no one else and Clov similarly answers that there’s no one else. It seems that in this lonely world, these two people are only together not because they want to but because they have no choice. This seems sad because it emphasizes how lonely people are which could be the result from the loss of meaning of the world. This goes along with nihilism, which is the rejection of moral principles, often believing that life is meaningless. Throughout the play, there is constant repetition which can represent the repetition that exists in everyday life. That being said, there is no meaning behind it. There is nothing people could do except wait for death. There are consistent pauses and yawns in the play and a particular part that we found in class was when Hamm yawns in the middle of the word “absolute” (768). With this, it seems to illustrate that there is a break from the absolute. Hamm yawning can also suggest the idea of boredom or that he doesn’t find any meaning to it. This goes along with the nihilistic tone because it rejects the idea of moral principles, in this case there’s the rejection of absolutism. Beckett seems to have written this way in trying to construct meaning. Using language, it tries to collect the fragments into developing this story.

Samuel Beckett left me speechless and yet full of questions. In Endgame he writes without plot and the entire play/storyline consists of only dialogue. The sentences are short and choppy, the tone is very depressing, and the setting seems very dull. Beckett’s use of language is very peculiar. He adds long pauses, hesitant sniffles, and yawns within his paragraphs and in some cases in the middle of his words. The pauses are used to add emphasis or change a subject, like used in ordinary works seen before. But the other things seen, the chuckles, the sniffs, and yawns are weirdly placed allowing for further examination. The instance we spoke about in class was where Beckett used a [yawn] to break apart the word “absolute.” He is literately shattering what was though of before, the old ideas such as what people thought of as being absolute, and trying to get us the think and maybe even redefine it. This can also be read into as part of Beckett’s nihilism. There is a nihilistic tone seen throughout the play and I believe it begins here. He is rejecting “God” and religious principles which were thought of to be absolute. In the play there is a tone of meaninglessness present. The characters are handicapped, violence is seen, and Hamm asks Clov to kill him more than once. The setting also adds to this. It is inside at all times, not explicitly mentioned, but seems dim and not very well lit. The only sense of an outside world we get are two little windows that are out of reach because Clov needs a ladder to see through them. This tone poses a problem because it creates dullness and an uneasy sense in the reader, but that is the exact way that Beckett gets us to shake our perception of normal and maybe start redefining what has been given all the times before.

The overarching idea that I felt like I was getting closer to in class was the idea of confronting or rather accepting absurdity to find true meaning. Looking at the reading Endgame by Beckett, absurdity is used to show us that somewhere along the lines meaning is lost and there is nothing left of it. Trying to find true meaning is impossible and it is through the use of absurdity that we can draw up that conclusion. As a class we were able to see how broken and fragmented the reading was, and we were able to see how through those cracks Beckett hoped to find some real meaning. Piecing together the fragments that made sense and getting rid of what didn’t. This right away reminded me of the reading Diary of a Madmen by Lu Xun and how he used the same sort of absurdity to show the wrongs in the Chinese feudal society. Through the use of cannibalism Xun was able to show how people were consumed by false meaning, resulting in them failing to realize the monsters they had become. They did not care for any human life but their own, essentially trapped in an internal hunger for something that isn’t even real. This absurd idea of flesh eating people was used by Xun to highlight the urgency for change and realization. Similarly, Beckett showed the lack of meaning in his lack of words and description. It was all very spotty and only flowed when the story of the tailor was being told. Which was the most important part because within that story we were able to see the sense of faithlessness coming from Beckett. The tailor explains how he is working on perfecting the man’s trousers and that six days is not enough, not even for god. God wasn’t able to create a perfect world and yet he is considered to be our savior. He failed to give real meaning to anything and left it up to us to decide what holds meaning and what doesn’t. The tailor on the other hand shows how he wants perfection, he wants the man’s trousers to fit and won’t be content until they serve their rightful purpose. It’s funny how the only smooth paragraph of the play holds this hidden message with so much meaning. The idea of creating fiction in order to create meaning also blew me away because it took me back to the very beginning. Shelly argued that only poets could help the world and now we see that the same idea is being applied to all these works of literature. Somehow literature could help us come to some sort of meaningful state and that is partially because of their ability to put into words what many cannot.

In a 350 word blog post, respond to the worldview that Beckett proposes. Use specific examples from the text. What challenges does the nihilistic tone of the play pose? What opportunities does it seem to offer, even if only implicitly? Due Thursday, 10pm.

Jacques Ellul in his interview asserts that responsibility in our society becomes “so fragmented and broken up into small pieces that no one is responsible”. He argues that the way our society operates is similar to a coherent mind in which people believe that they are preforming individual tasks, however they arrive at a same conclusion. He uses the example a dam bursting to explain how the different elements that created the damn were equal parts not responsible for its collapse. The geologists that studied the terrain and engineers planned the dam, the workmen who built the damn, and the politicians who decided where the dam cannot be held accountable for the collapse of the dam although their separate jobs had the same consequence. Jacques Ellul concludes that no one is free either; regardless of if responsibility can be assigned to an individual.

In The Visit, the citizens of Guellen acted in a similar way when faced with the option presented by Claire and ultimately Ill’s death. The citizens acted independently of one another but still arrived at Ill’s death somehow. No one is explicitly responsible for his death; the police, the priest, and the rest of the citizens didn’t plan to kill Ill. However, their separate acts become complicit in Claire’s intentions for Ill. The citizens premature buying on credit were indicative of their expectations of money. The policeman’s willingness to overlook Claire’s incitement to murder Ill as well as his new shoes, gold tooth, and expensive beer was enough reassurance that he would ignore his duty to “maintain order and protect the individual” for personal gain. The priest ignored Ill’s concerns about his life by redirecting the conversation to Ill’s personal salvation and prompting him to examine his conscience, ironically the priest the church has a new bell.

The citizen’s agree at the time with the mayor’s response to Claire’s offer that “we would rather have poverty than blood on our hands”, but their actions were indifferent. In a sense the people of the town had an attitude of whatever happens, happens; and left Ill in a position without any reassurance of their support but also of not their intent to kill him. In the end Ill is found dead but there is no way to point the blame.

In the video, Jacques Ellul makes the interesting argument that advancements in technology have confiscated individual freedom and social responsibility. In order to argue this, he explains that cars are used very similarly, although they give us the ability to go and travel anywhere. We “freely” choose to travel at the same time and to the same destinations. Because of this conformity, the individual loses its value and combines with the greater mass of society.This loss of individuality then brings up the question of responsibility. In a community where the individual is not considered, who can be held responsible for wrongs in society? These themes are similar to the ideas present in Durrenmatt’s The Visit. The people of Guellen have lost their sense of individuality, not due to advancements in technology but because they all accepted that Alfred would die and the town would be saved. In the play, we see that money makes people lose their sense of individuality. The townspeople conformed and began buying the same yellow shoes and other expensive items on credit. Because they are all participating in creating more debt for Guellen, this illustrates the lack of responsibility from the townspeople. Giving Alfred’s life to Claire then becomes the general decision that the town implicitly agrees upon. With this in mind, who is held responsible for Alfred’s death? No single person can be held responsible for the death of Alfred. Ellul explains this loss of responsibility by describing the collapse of a dam. The construction of a dam includes several groups of people including politicians, builders, etc. Each group is responsible for a specific task and the work is fragmented. When the dam collapses, Ellul argues that no single person can be held responsible. With this mentality, it can be concluded that responsibility diminishes where individuality is not present. However, as readers we know that every single person that bought goods on credit has contributed to the death of Alfred. Once there is conformity in a society, wrongdoings are overlooked. This can also prove the power of the larger community and the act of conformity.

In class, we’ve discussed three themes: power, responsibility, and justice in relation to Durrenmatt’s The Visit. After watching Jacques Ellul’s interview, I was able to make connections with his and Durrenmatt’s view towards society.

Jacques Ellul and Durrenmatt both make it evident that there is an issue of power. Ellul argues that people are living an illusion that they are free, when actually they are submitting themselves to a system. The system that he addresses is the very same technological system that is found in Durrenmatt’s play: money. People believe that with money, they are, “free to eat nice things, free to buy a car to travel, etc”. While yes, it is arguable that you can go where ever you want, but the ability for you to travel is only given to you when you trade your time for money. So does that really make you free? A similar idea can be found in Durrenmatt’s play when the people start buying on credit. The people are given the “freedom” to buy all sorts of things like new shoes, but at what cost? To be put in debt to Claire? That would be the same thing as submitting to her, and when viewed in a certain way, she is the symbol of “money”.

Jacques Ellul and Durrenmatt are also both attacking “justice” within a society, more specifically what is moral/good. Durrenmatt makes it evident when Claire bends the rules for certain characters. For example, when Ill tells the policeman about the corruption of Claire, but he refuses to arrest her. In addition, when Claire told the doctor that the next diagnosis ought to be a “heart attack”. These characters were influenced by the wealth (good) that Claire provided, rather than their intended roles by society (also good). This then creates a problem, because it’s unclear of what is morally right to do. Should a society function with fairness, as in ALL people are equal, or is it okay to bend rules as long as the person bending them has a lot of money? Ellul touches on this subject in a way that I believe is more related to the working class people. A lot of the working class citizens work in fragmented roles, and are given justice for their work (bosses gives a salary). That leaves a lot of people determined that what they are doing is morally good, and that the lives they lead are justified. But then that raises the question of why we, as a society, believe that our worth is limited to the same value we give to money? Why does money justify everything? When did a salary become the “good” for someone than actually wanting to play a truly valuable role within a society?

The world is a massive community that consists of a bunch of systems interacting with one another to attempt to produce results that benefit the world. However in this video, Jacques Ellul attempts to bring attention to the dark side of how the world actually works– reality. The first issue he raises is where organ donations come from. It is a shame that diseases are real and that there are many unfortunate individuals who contract these diseases that require organ transplants to help them get better, however, there is also the question of where and how these organ donations come from. As stated in the video, an organ that is suitable for transplant must be healthy and fresh. The only possible way for this to happen is for the donor to have died from a traffic accident. Now this is a conflicting question that society encounters because society wants to save the ill patients, yet at the same time in order to save these patients, others would have to die first. Basically, it’s a trade; a life for another life. This relates to The Visit play where the town abandons Ill in exchange for wealth and better standard of living. The trade-off between the two stakes at hand are equally great, but the answer is easier for the person who is receiving the benefit. Many people, like the townspeople in the play, would choose the greater benefit for their personal gains. This is also tied in with Ellul’s other argument of technology being an interconnected system that has no faults. Technology is a massive system that is incorporated in the majority of the world’s lives. It is rare that you encounter someone who has never used technology before. In the play’s case, the entire town agreed that the Claire, the antagonist of the play, should able to receive her benefit of Ill’s death as a redemption of Ill’s wrongdoing towards her long time ago, with an “unintended bribery” on the low. It makes other people question where the justice is in that for the victims that are thrown away for society’s gain.

Ariana