# of Words: 305

Endgame was Samuel Beckett's very first full-length play following his renowned Waiting for Godot. When it first came out in 1958 it received somewhat mixed reviews (as had Godot a couple of years before), with a few critics charging that Beckett was just doing the exact same thing repeatedly. Renowned literary critic Harold Bloom composed that Endgame "stays a bigger play than any other dramatist has given us in this century.

"

For one thing, Endgame is a good example of theatrical "minimalism" that could become hugely influential after in the 20th century. Minimalism is a design based on the easy assumption that the less you place on point, the more important what will be on point becomes. Beckett was clearly fully aware of this increased importance because, not only did he revise the play repeatedly, but he also composed Endgame in French (not his native speech) and then translated it into English (which he did with all of his work following his 1945 novel, Watt). Beckett used French, which he was less comfortable than with English, to ensure that he fought with each phrase -- to ensure that nothing came too easily.

A last point: for those not well acquainted with black comedy, Endgame is an odd and cruel playwith. In the time it was composed, not too long after World War II, apocalyptic visions were much in fashion, and readers had been obsessed with the issue of finding meaning in a world filled with anguish. Beckett can squeeze humor from these visions of individual pain; nonetheless, he never ceases to plead with his characters. Over and above, in all of his work, he portrayed individuals who had endured so much that they had been long past expectation. And yet, even in the absence of expectation, his characters still continue on for reasons that they can't understand.

Related Papers

Antigone Jean Anouilh

Welcome to Thebes, Shmoopers. The population of this town is pretty thickly doomed--when they're not sleeping with their own mothers (lookin' at you, Oedipus) or acting all high and mighty and assuming that their legislation is far better than the gods' (cough, Creon, cough cough), they're burying their brother when devoting their brother is forbidden--c'mon, Antigone; we've been over this. Antigone is the third volume in what is maybe the most messed up Greek tragic trilogy of all time:......Read More

Everyday Use Alice Walker

It is pretty fitting that Alice Walker's "Regular Use" is contained in a brief story collection known as In Love and Trouble. You know, because it has got love... and difficulty, trouble, trouble. Walker released this collection of stories in 1973, just a decade before she won the Pulitzer Prize for just a tiny book you have heard of predicted The Color Purple. Like this super famous novel, "Regular Use" explores African women's struggles with racial identity and racism through a particularly......Read More

Flowers For Algernon Daniel Keyes

It is a story as old as time, or at least as old as Warner Bros.: a super-smart laboratory mouse along with his sidekick strategy to conquer their captors and take over the entire world in Flowers for Algernon. Alright, so our main man, Charlie, is a bit more into living an experimental operation than creating minions bow to his greatness--and he also is not a mouse (although his sidekick is)--but writer Daniel Keyes is surely interested in what happens when you futz around with intellect of the......Read More

Related Topics