The setting of Endgame is characteristic of a Beckett play; a décor reduced to the barest minimum. A naked stage, both a poetic symbol and a parody of traditional theater, with only two dust bins, a chair, and a backward painting to look at. High...

Endgame, as the very title suggests, is about ends or an end. Its opening words, 'Finished, it's finished...' pervade the action, or perhaps rather inaction, that follows, and throughout the play Beckett, like Shakespeare in King Lear, employs a...

During a time of the utmost rationality, when the serious nature of man was exposed in its most raw form, Samuel Beckett-- author of Endgame --- tackled subject matters that stepped out from under the issue of war and the tangible problems of his...

At first glimpse, Samuel Beckett's Endgame has absolutely nothing in common with the model provided in Aristotle's Poetics. Where Aristotle claims the most important element of any tragedy is plot, Endgame seems to have no plot. Where Aristotle...

“The absence of action is intrinsic to Beckett’s vision of despair” Show how inactivity is linked to Beckett’s portrayal of a dystopia.

Hamm’s realisation of the futility of the search for a meaning to life leads him to a state of satisfaction in...

It’s impossible to analyse Beckett without struggling with his work’s abstract, surreal nature; the typical minimalist language mixed with abnormal premises make it difficult to find comprehensible meaning. Due to this universal difficulty Beckett...

Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame presents time in a way that no human has previously had to experience or comprehend. Consequently, when the characters of the play attempt to make sense of their situation, they often seem confused and disoriented....

After its release in 1957, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame has baffled readers and cemented Beckett as one of the most important playwrights of the 20th century. It is commonly ascribed to the “theatre of the absurd”, a term coined by renowned literary...

Beckett once stated in regard to his plays that “any production which ignores my stage directions is completely unacceptable to me”[1]; a famous rule cautioning the director from straying far from the playwright’s vision. Crucially, Beckett’s...

The destruction and anxiety caused by the political upheaval in Europe in the 20th century, (especially World War II) resulted in the mass disillusionment among the people. There was a feeling of fear, doubt and pessimism all over Europe. The...

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot follows two men, Vladimir and Estragon, through a series of largely uneventful and stagnated scenes. The two men constantly attempt to distance themselves from their dismal situation, creating a pattern of...

In some works of literature, a character who appears briefly, or does not appear at all, is a significant presence. An example of this can be found in the play Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett.

The play deals with a hope for a change and a...

Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot and James Joyce's Ulysses are strikingly similar in style, content, and most significantly a philosophy of life. The idea of language as doubly futile and liberating is central to both works. It is found in the...

GUILDENSTERN: All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. ~ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom...

In Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the playwright bestows upon his work the veneer of comedy, but invests the heart of it with the "absurd", the tragic. He employs the gags and the routines, the circus comedy and the songs of the "lowbrow"...

Samuel Beckett, in Waiting for Godot, and Ionesco, in The Bald Prima Donna, both embody the values associated with "Theatre of the Absurd". This is achieved through their use of language, characterisation, and stage direction in order to portray...

To existentialist writers, the universe is a foreign and indifferent place. Every aspect of creation, including the universe itself, is pitted against the individual. Existence is meaningless and oblivion both before birth and after death-save for...

“…man cannot endure for long the absence of meaning. And meaning, in it most basic sense, is pattern. If man cannot find pattern in his world, he will try by any means at his disposal to create it, or at least imagine it” (Webb 55). Aristotle...

Following the near apocalyptic end of the Second World War, an overwhelming state of fear and confusion would go on to cause a major shift in the artistic expression of the day. Nothing remained sacred as doubt replaced any virtue of knowledge,...

When the Paris curtain opened in 1953 the audience was faced with a minimalist set with a tree and nothing else. The first sight of ‘En Attendant Godot’ suggests its bleakest tones are presented by Beckett through visual sadness and the overall...

Modernism was a movement that formed at the beginning of the twentieth century and lasted roughly 65 years. Cultural shocks, such as World War I, instigated the era of Modernism. While this war was meant to end all wars, people could not fathom...

The debate about the relationship of the two characters Pozzo and Lucky has existed since the original performance of Waiting for Godot and has failed, much like the rest of the play, to suggest any kind of concrete conclusion. The name “Lucky”...

Although Waiting for Godot and Mother Courage and Her Children are quite different in terms of plot structure and setting, there are similarities present in the use of bleak imagery as symbols of religious, social, and political criticism. The...

After the chaos of the atomic bomb and the carnage of World War II, precedence was placed on government constructs to supply order to a tense climate, particularly in finding direction in a new ‘East versus West’ conflict. In John Le Carre’s...