Endgame By Samuel Beckett

The mood and attitude of Samuel Beckett’s 1957 play, Endgame, are reflective of the year of its conception. The history that reflects directly on the play itself is worth sole attention. In that year, the world was a mixed rush of Cold War fear, existential reason, and race to accomplishment (Garraty 307). Countries either held a highlighted concern with present wartime/possibility of war, or involvement with the then sprouting movement of Existentialism. The then “absurdist theater” reflected the values and concerns of the modern society (Petty). The accomplishments of man, such as the Soviet launching of both Sputnik satellites, sparked international competition. 1957 was not a year of unification and worldly brotherhood, it was a time that pushed for individual accomplishment and responsibility.

The world Endgame describes is a post-apocalyptic nightmare. There is a dwindling supply of pain medication and food, and most of the natural resources have utterly disappeared. Gulls, sawdust and even sunlight has ceased to exist “(Klaus 453-487). The inhabitants of this world are waiting for death, as it seems inevitable, and no longer hold to the hope of salvation. Even the dialogue produces a sense of sterility, being that Hamm and Clov believe they are the specks of life left on the planet. References to death are scattered throughout the play. As Jacques Lemarchand described it, “this may be the very game we play all the time, without ever believing it to be as close as it is to its end” (Klaus 484). The metaphor for death or coming to the “end” is referred to in the first lines of the play as Clov says, “Finished, it’s nearly finished, it must be nearly finished” (Klaus 465).

In the real world, the threat of nuclear war gave the people of both America and the Soviet Union a raw realization of the possibility of a barren and dead world, such as the world in Endgame. In Russia in 1957, it was noted that the “big guns” were as equally belonging to the Communist East, as to the Democratic West. Regarding Soviet Communism, a reporter for the New York Times commented, “Since 1945 United States foreign policy has been forced to concern itself with one major threat to the peaceful and orderly development of the kind of international community the American people desire” (Cold War). America was seen worldwide as having the main responsibility of facilitating an ...

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...proved that art does indeed reflect life.

Works Cited

“Cold War.” Columbia Encyclopedia. American Online. 30 March 2001. <http://www.bartleby.com/65/co/coldwar/html>.

Eiermann, Katharena. Realms of Existentialism. New York: Aspirennies, 1997.

“Foreign Policy in Silence.” Foreign Affairs 23 (1957): 22-26.

Garraty, John A., and Peter Gay. “1957.” The Modern World. Vol. 3. New York: Harper and Row, (1972): 307-342.

Klaus, Carl H., Miriam Gilbert, and Bradford S. Fields, Jr.. Modern and Contemporary Drama. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

Petty, Ryan. From Beckett to Stoppard: Existentialism, Death, and Absurdity.

May 1999. 3 Apr. 2001 http://home.sprintmail.com/~lifeform/beckstop.html>. Sandberg, Robert. The Comedy of Unhappiness: A Critical Study of

Endgame and Waiting for Godot. 27 Sept. 1997. 2 Apr. 2001

<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nelsonde/Texts/beckett.html>.

Stiefel, Ethan. Foreign Affairs: October-July, 1957-1958. New York: Harper and

Row, 1960.