— Anonymous
The following response will be based on “Endgame” by Samuel Beckett. The one-act play was very hard to understand after only reading a pdf. When I read the Endgame for the first time, I did not get many of the metaphors or symbolism in it. There were too many dialogues which had deep hidden meanings which were meant for the audience to think and understand. I thought maybe it is a just a casual conversation between a master and his worker. Also, I did not appreciate the story that much until I saw the performance of the play. It made me appreciate the story maybe because visuals make it easy to understand the deep meanings inside a story. I also enjoyed the performance a lot. An act that is written for a play is always more appealing when someone sees it rather than read it. It was quite enjoyable but not as the last story I read which was called “Good Country People”. Endgame is more of a tragedy mixed with comedy. I knew the story had more meaning to it than I understood, so the first thing I looked at was the questions and notes provided by the professor. The questions in that document helped me to think about certain parts of the story that I just thought wasn’t that important. One of the points on the document was to reverse the role of Clov and Hamm and see how the dynamics changes. I also found out from the notes that this story was set post-apocalyptic. This made me understand why Clov was looking out the window on the left and right all the time. The story had different themes and one of them was light. In my opinion, the light represented the life in the story. The other was dark which represented death. Apart from the notes, the discussion board was also helpful. I got to understand how my classmates interpreted the story and if my conclusion matched theirs. The discussion on why Clov does not leave Hamm despite both not liking each other. I think both were so used to each other that even though they don’t like each other, but they don’t hate each other either. It is more like the emptiness and loneliness makes them stay together. Maybe it’s different for Clov as he does not have a shelter to stay in other than the one of Hamm. When Clov asks Hamm why he keeps him, Hamm replies, “There’s no one else” and Clov says, “There’s nowhere else”. I don’t know if there is compassion between them or is it just about surviving. Furthermore, I felt the story was a bit repetitive, but also get that if someone writes about four people living their life and records what they do every day, it will be repetitive. Two of them were living maybe better than the other two (Nell and Nagg). Both of them were treated as if they were caged animals. This may be relatable to today’s time where parents are sent away so that they won’t have to deal with their parents. I also got to know that Endgame is a chess term. This makes me understand that this story is about life and death and they are just playing their part in the play knowing what the conclusion will be.
