— Anonymous
The dark side
During this semester, I’ve read many different types of literature. They all give me different feelings and inspirited me in different ways. among those reading, I found one text that I didn’t understand and makes me feel uncomfortable. The “Endgame” by Samuel Beckett talked about four people with disabilities living under a roof and one of them was the “king” who gives other orders. This text also has a stage play, which makes me feel more uncomfortable after seeing it. The overall setting of this text is in a small, dark room, where a person moved limply. He opened all the windows, moved the ladder, and the crunching noise makes me feel scared. And there was a person set on the chair with his face covered in a bag, for the first time I thought this story was about murder and torture. But as I kept reading and watching the stage play, I found out that it’s all about the life of three people who lived under the tyranny of the old man that set on the chair. This literature contained many different elements, loneliness, language violence, disrespectful and cold blood. We can’t say those elements were only for plays, they exist in reality and that’s what makes me feel uncomfortable. It’s like people’s life and the dark side has been exposed under sunlight, the truth that people are not willing to admit has been shown to the public. There was one interesting point where Clov (the limp man) who threatened to leave the old man on the chair many times but never make it real. The old man on the chair can’t move and can’t see either. I think the reason for that is because they are the same type of person who was abandoned by society. Neither of them can be accepted by the large population and the only chance they live is to stick together. And that’s a sad thing, it makes me recall a thing my aunt used to tell me. Her marriage wasn’t happy, her husband and she fought a lot. I once asked her why she didn’t just leave her husband, she said “adults have different difficulties, we need to do everything to ensure our life doesn’t crush. And I have a kid, I want to give her a happy childhood. Also living by myself will face more challenges and pressure. Out of all the reason, it’s better for us to stay together”. When people are facing different challenges, most of them chose the easy one, even though this will make themselves uncomfortable. In the text, the “king” placed his parents in a trach can and treated them with disrespect. Later in the story, his mother passed away, and he didn’t even show a little bit of sadness. He also treated his father badly, and the only reason for the “king” talk to his father is when he needs someone to talk to. This sound ridiculous, but it happened in reality. I’ve seen many family disputes on the news, and some of them were about parents and kids. When kids have grown up, most of them chose to leave their parents and discover new things in the world. But, a little portion of them abandoned their parent after seen the temptations. The parents who have been left at home have no one to take care of them, and some of them have a harsh life and might die due to an uncomfortable environment. All of those elements in the text makes me feel uncomfortable. Not only because it shows the dark side of human beings, but also because those elements actually existed in reality. This makes me wonder if there are more dark sides of human nature that I haven’t discover yet.
