In Endgame by Samuel Buckett, isolation was a big part of the theme. In my opinion, the way the actors presented on stage was really similar to the short film, Breathe. Before the play, the director informed us to pretend that the background is filled with black and white with two windows on top. In Breathe, it was shot in a dark cramped place, where you can even hear your thoughts talking to you. The way the sound is played, I can imagine the frustration and loneliness behind it just like in the Endgame. Clov said, “I can’t be punished anymore.” It expressed his frustration and loneliness he has been trying to hide it from Hamm when it was so easy to detect. Both the text and the video shows that they are isolated from the outside world and are closed inside with no way out. In the beginning of Endgame, Clov was trying to go to the kitchen to clean while in Breathe, it shows the kitchen sink. It was filthy and it was as the person in Breathe was trying to force himself to do something about it with his last “breathe”. Similarly, Clov seems like he’s trying to do something before he literally loses his humanity or maybe it’s another way of waiting for the last day to come – Endgame.
Crystal Wong
Crystal, you brought up the point of how Endgame and Breathe both make the setting isolated from the outside world with no way out. This reminds me of the saying, “When God closes a door, he opens a window.” This makes me wonder whether isolation is something that we cause, internally. Perhaps, it is only because we trick our mind into thinking that there is no way out, but in reality, there are ways to escape. Like in Endgame, if they really wanted to find out what is going on outside and leave the place, they can, rather than being pessimistic and just thinking that an end to everything is foreseeable.
I agree with the isolation concept you have noted in both “Breath” and “Endgame”. I also think that there is a difference in both the hopelessness and loneliness portrayed in the two works. I feel that “Breath” is trying to show the hopelessness that has been created not by self choice; whereas, the characters in “Endgame”, at least Clov, has a choice. Assuming from the fact that he threatens to leave throughout the play, he is a key character in the sense that he has the ability to break the cycle. Nevertheless, he does not. As you have pointed out how the person in “Breath” struggles and tries to force himself to actually do something, the characters in “Endgame” appears to show a form of fear of change rather than showing the will of acting on their dilemma and have their situation changed.
-Chi Z.
Crystal, I completely agree with your take on the theme of Isolation portrayed by both Endgame and Breath by Samuel Buckett. In the poem “The Virginal, Vibrant, Beautiful Dawn” by Stephane Mallarme, there is a theme of death. In the poem, the words “haunted”, “struggling hopelessly”, “earth’s horror”, and “the Swan in his exile is rendered motionless” are the reasons why I believe death is a theme. This theme is also seen in the Endgame. This theme is seen, not only when Nell dies, but also when Nagg and Nell where introduced in the garbage, as if they were in their caskets. Just like the Swan in a motionless lake, the characters in Endgame are in a place where their movements are limited, which is usually the case when something is dead. Crystal, compared “Breath” to isolation, which closely relates to my theme of death. Those in Endgame and the Swan in the Poem will die in isolation.
Much like Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, The Chestnut Tree explores the absurd as a form of accepted reality, similar to the one faced by the characters in Endgame. The passage discusses the inability for things to exist with any sort of passivity, and laments the fact that once something is, it is in excess, bloated and forceful. Similar to the manner in which Hamm and Clov exist in a continuous string of questioning, the main character in Sartre’s Chestnut Tree wrestles with the notions of existence, and whether things that exist are entirely superfluous in their existence. This parallel is best exemplified by the thought, “To exist is simply … to be there”, uttered by Roquentin. This constant stream of questioning, coupled with the doubt about one’s own purpose in the grand scheme of an uncertain reality is found throughout both The Chestnut Tree and The Endgame. Simply being there is a state of existence that is perhaps best personified by the very characters within Endgame, who seem to have nowhere to go and nothing of importance to do.