Endgame by Samuel Beckett

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S Hovet
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Joined: 15 Jun 2016, 15:04
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Endgame by Samuel Beckett

Post by S Hovet »

Samuel Beckett’s Endgame reminds me of something my father often says about reading so-and-so being like “wrapping yourself in a damp blanket.” At times, you can almost get sick of Beckett for insisting on the ongoing horror of existence. But it depends on how you read the play, set in an apocalyptic world in which everything, including language, is radically reduced. In many enactments of the play, the stage is set as a giant skull with Clov, Hamm, Nagg, and Nell dwelling in the gaping eye sockets.

Despite this bleakness, one of the chief pleasures of Endgame lies in its jet-black humor. Take this exchange between Hamm and his “accursed progenitor,” Nagg.

Hamm: Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?

Nagg: I didn’t know.

Hamm: What? What didn’t you know?

Nagg: That it’d be you.

This answer to why one’s loins introduced a highly unpleasant stranger into the household rings humorous and startlingly apt. Later, Hamm’s attempt to tell a story (which illustrates that even storytelling and speaking are endangered in this contracting world) pairs specialized jargon like “anenometer” with “it was a howling wild day” in a long parade of devices such as “hygrometer” and “heliometer,” which only illustrate Hamm’s inability to grasp what goes into the making of a story. The pressure Beckett places on language in the face of imminent apocalypse is just one of the constructions separating the monochromatic, cerebral play from the disaster-porn proliferation of apocalypse fare any given movie theater near you today. If you are a Beckett newbie, this play is a prime introduction, captivating in its grimness.
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