What interests me most is the idea of what the show is actually about. I think, due to the style of Endgame, and other Beckett pieces, that the representation of life is perfectly clear. Laughter may be the first response, but if looking at the text, it's lack of outside description for the world (i.e. bare interior, etc) really takes the focus away from outside things and allows focus to be on the dialogue and movement. By allowing ourselves to be part of a world of no distraction (I shudder to say nothingness), we are embracing the world of Clov and Hamm as one of our own, much the way we take on Gogo and Didi as extensions of ourselves.
The next thought that arises is...if this is life, what part of life is this? My first thought is that Hamm and Clov are dead, right along with Nagg and Nell. For example, in this bit of dialogue it suggests that death is a very prominent part of their existence, but I would ve naturally nture to say that it's is a prominent part of their past, rather than immediate future:
HAMM: Is Mother Pegg's light on?
CLOV: Light! How could anyone's light be on?
HAMM: Extinguished!
CLOV: Naturally it's extinguished. If it's not on it's extinguished.
HAMM: No, I mean Mother Pegg.
CLOV: But she's extinguished! (Pause.) What's the matter with you today?
HAMM: I'm taking my course. (Pause.) Is she buried?
CLOV: Buried! Who would have buried her?
HAMM: You.
CLOV: Me! Haven't I enough to do without burying people?
HAMM: But you'll bury me.
CLOV: No I won't bury you. (Pause.)
The light could represent the life-force of a person, rather than what may be seen as eyesight. Since eyesight is referred to as vision earlier in the play by Hamm or Clov. However, I do not think that the light is essentially a life-force but is also the legacy of a lifeforce. For example, if Hamm is a corpse, his is still in a represented stage before his burial, like Nell and Nagg. So where are they? They are in a non-existant place between death and after-death, if there is an after death; "HAMM: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon? CLOV: What in God's name could be on the horizon?"(31). They are in a place of no hope for anything better, which further lends itself to the idea that they are in a place of death. i'd like to make a statement that by death, I mean not alive.
So what does that mean to the reader and the viewer? Why would Beckett make this choice? I think it is a commentary on how petty the living are, and how in death, there is no pleasing us. It's a sordid slap in the face that pushes one to look at the "beauty" of life. Life is a cycle, and a game, and I believe that Beckett uses Endgame to show what the mirror of that is. Life and death go hand in hand as a cycle, the way that Endgame is cyclical. When HAMM places the handkerchief back upon his head, I soon believe that Clov will soon return and the play will begin.
Nature has forgotten about them, remember?
HAMM: Then there's no reason for it to change.
CLOV: It may end. (Pause) All life long the same questions, the same answers. (5)
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I think the idea of them being in an "in-between" spot that isn't life and isn't "after death" is a reading quite a few people have of this play, and a very persuasive one. I was just wondering if it's possible to think of the actual words and movements themselves in a vacuum: as if they stand alone outside of any context or history, etc. And it occurred to me that this is kind of what happens to actors in theatre-they aren't inhabiting their characters or a play in a way that's fully real; they're somewhere between existing and not existing, if that makes any sense. The characters are not "alive" in any real sense, but nor can they be considered dead, since they never were really among the living.
This is sort of unrelated, but I was just listening to a program in which a scientist was speculating about death as a process; his feeling is that it's not a "one minute you're here, now you're gone" kind of thing. It's a process that happens over time-and maybe Beckett's suggesting that it's always happening, from the moment we're born.
I really like this idea Zac has. Slowly dieing or dead and having to relive the time or just waiting in limbo for the next best or worse thing.
Or think of it as this guy that just came out of a comma after 23 yrs and was conscious the WHOLE time!
Imagine seeing, hearing and not being able to do a dam thing for 23 years!!!!! Ill take clov and hamms place anytime.
Here is the video if you have not heard this story.
http://www.wil92.com/post/27330_man_was_conscious_during_his_23_year_coma/video
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