Endgame Review

      Endgame, written by Samuel Beckett, is a theatre of absurd, which explores the meaninglessness of life. The sense of death was created and strongly heightened throughout the play after the author witnessed the death of his mother from disease and of his brother from lung cancer, along with his experiences from WWII. The depressing atmosphere which was created by the fear of death was deeply rooted in my mind.
      As I stepped into the theatre, the cell-like stage setting gave me a feeling of depression. The wall was dark grey with two closed windows. A pile of battered books were cluttered in the corner with two old boxes in front of it. Dust and wastes was everywhere. All the things in the room seemed like had experienced a catastrophe, torn and broken, which somehow set up the fundament for the plot.
       In the play, there were "two pairs" of characters ---- Hamm and Clov, Nagg and Nell. Hamm seemed to be the one who was in charge even though he was blind and cannot stand. He sat on a grand but old chair which was located right in the middle of the room. Clov was his servant. He can see but cannot stand. The dependent relationship was very dominant between them. Another pair of characters were Hamm's parents ---- Nagg and Nell. They lived in the two ashcans next to each other. They symbolized a different kind of relationship ---- rather than master and servant, they were wife and husband. But surprisingly, the sense of dependence was broke by the death of Nell in the middle of the play, which deepened the others' fear toward death. That was also the moment made me feel impressed the most. Nagg knocked hardly at the ashcan but no one would respond to him anymore. And then, he slowly returned to his small room, and silently closed the lid. The wary sound of crying resounded everywhere in the theatre.
      Except the despairing atmosphere built up by the stage setting and death of Nell, the existence of death was very dominant throughout the play. There were two windows in the room. At the beginning of the play, Hamm asked Clov to see if there was anything outside the window. But every time when Clov looked outside the window, there was nothing either on the sea or on the earth. Thus, there was no ship, no fish, no people on the sea, and no car, no tree, no building on the earth. There was not any sign of life, but only the rest four people in the room. The author somehow conveys a kind of idea that living is dying. The only thing people can do after they born is to waiting for death. This is absolutely very pessimistic. I cannot agree with him, but I am still touched by his play.