As the title implies, Endgame is about an ending or a conclusion. In the opening phrase, “Finished, It’s Finished …'”, the words pervade or rather, inaction that follows. Like Shakespeare’s King Lear, Beckett also uses a lexicon implying an apocalypse. Clov’s telescope shows ‘zero,’ the anonymous painter/engraver sees nothing but ashes when he looks out the window he’s been dragged to, and Hamm says that ‘Outside it’s Death’. There are many references in the dialogue to the dead or dying. Mother Pegg’s character, Nell is one example.
CLOV: I am back with the glass. [He looks upwards at the window to his right.] The steps are needed.
HAMM: Why? You have shrunk, right? [Exit from CLOV by using a telescope.] It’s not what I like.
Enter CLOV without the telescope, but with the ladder.
CLOV: Here are the steps again. [He drops the ladder on the floor under the window. He climbs it up, but realizes that there is no telescope.] I need glass.
He walks to the front door.
HAMM: [Violently.] But you’ve got the glass!
CLOV: [Halting, violently.] No, the glass isn’t mine!
[Exit CLOV.]
HAMM: It’s deadly. (pp.24/25)
The interaction is tragic and comic in the sense that it fails completely. It seems like this scene of miscommunication is repeated over and over again. The words and their meanings are distorted and the communication is broken. The language used in the play represents the idea that the world is ending, both through its content as well as its obvious failure to function. Clov’s and Hamm’s words are not heard or heeded, so they seem to be alone on the stage, no matter how much they need each. The lengthy pauses which are interspersed between the speeches of Clov and Hamm show a language just as handicapped. But it is silence that conveys tragedy, not words.
Hamm is not the only one who has a distorted view of the scene and set. A skull-like interior is illuminated by grey light. In the centre of this ‘bare’ interior, an elderly blind tyrant wears his dressing dress and has his face covered in a red handkerchief. Hamm and his toothless, legless mother are displayed in two ashbins that stand side-by-side at the stage’s front. A limping server is waiting on all three. The spectators see literal images that depict degeneration. The human race is reduced to waste. The decay of the language and visuals may suggest an end, but the little boy Clov sees in the death and zero beyond the window can be seen as a beacon for hope. The English version of the text provides little illustration, but the French original is more descriptive. Clov described the boy in lines Beckett never translated as being immobile and leaning against rock while contemplating his navy. The position of the foetus suggests a birth. The image of the rock, reminiscent of Christ’s grave and a possible resurrection, reinforces this idea. Perhaps the small boy represents redemption, a possibility of continuation and rebirth.
Endgame has a sense of renewal that is inverted. The tragedy in this film is not the death of the characters, but the fact that they must live and continue the same story over and again. Hamm’s last word’remain’ is associated with decay and destruction. He and Clov seem to be’remains.’ They are the’smithereens ‘of a humanity shattered into pieces, Eliots ‘undead’in The Waste Land. Yet, the word suggests both continuity and the ability to survive. In the solipsistic realm of the stage, these are horrific negations. Clov lifts the lid of Nagg’s garbage bin and looks in, telling his master that ‘He is crying’. Hamm says ‘Then it’s true’. The world of the play does not rest on the Cartesian principle of ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’, but rather a perversion: ‘I am because I suffer’. The son, in the play, calls his father a ‘cursed progenitor.’
HAMM: a flea! Do fleas still exist?
CLOV: There’s only one. [Scratching.] Except it’s an crablouse.
HAMM: [Very perturbed.] But the humanity could start over from scratch! Catch him, please God! (p.27)
Beckett has inverted the tragic because killing is a ‘love act’ and dying is a desired end. However, it is not reached, since the story is still “nearly complete”. Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author has characters who have no other destiny than what is written in the script. They are destined to be there and can do nothing else. Clov & Hamm are also acting in the manner that the author allows. Clov’s master replies laconically to Clov’s metatheatrical question, “What keeps me here?” (p.40). Clov stands at the door with Hamm in his armchair and Hamm’s face is covered by his handkerchief. In the end, they realize that all they can do is ‘play’. Hamm Clov both are acutely aware of what they are doing; they are a self-conscious, fictional character who is aware of his inability not only to act but also live. Renewal, in its vicious cycle, reinforces rather than negates the suffering. In this sickeningly ironic way, Endgame’s tragedy lies.
