Endgame Without The End

As a person who rarely goes to the theatre but rather reads the plays, I was really offset by this play. Furthermore, as a person who has always disliked Beckett and his style in general, this play was even a greater surprise.

Luckily, there's always some teacher who comes into your life and says 'You must read it, for the love of life'.

And so I did read it and enjoyed every bit of it.

Although it is a despairing play about despair, it is so extremely funny how Beckett tells us not to try to find meaning in life, because there is none.

The play is about two men, Hamm and Clov. Hamm is an old man in wheelchair and Clov is his servant. None of them could live without each other.

All of the characters want to escape from the meaninglessness of life, but only one of them succeeds. It is Nell, Hamm's mother, whose way of escaping is in death.
The major theme of the play is the fear of life, and the fear of life after that. Therefore they kill every form of life surrounding them.

What was most interesting for me in the play was its title. Endgame as in endgame in chess. The outcome of the game is known and you have to live on, knowing what to expect. We still struggle to give meaning to the end of the game, the death, so that our lives would have meaning.

The play definitely has its comic qualities. Even in its metaphoric messages, it is too tragic to be taken seriously.

Just like most of Beckett's plays, these characters are only lonely clowns, without courage to end and without strength to go on. That's why they indulge in their small talk, which can sound too hillarious at times, just to escape from this 'Something' which is actually 'Nothing'.