More than Zero: A Reflection on Beckett’s Endgame By: Ashley McLean

Do you not think this has gone on long enough?

Yes!

…

What?

This…this…thing.

I’ve always thought so

…

You not?

Then it’s a day like any other day.

As long as it lasts.

…

All life long the same inanities.

I can’t leave you.

I know. And you can’t follow me.

…

If you leave me how shall I know?

Well you simply whistle me and if I don’t come running it means I’ve left you.

…

You won’t come and kiss me goodbye?

Oh I shouldn’t think so.

…

I remember sitting in Gretchen’s living room with several other people. We were just days out from leaving for our trip. We’d just eaten lasagna, and we were discussing Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Her husband had talked with us about COVID-19. We knew it was a threat, but we felt comfortable, sure we’d be boarding a plane in a few days to England where we’d watch a few plays, eat a little food, generally enjoy ourselves before we came back to reality. It’d be like a vacation, something that we would look back on fondly forever.

After dinner, we gathered around the coffee table. We talked about Hamm and Clov, about existentialism. Imagine we’re all trapped in this room. We don’t starve, we don’t die, but we can’t leave. Just us and this room.

I think that what made me and so many of my peers connect to this play so much is the irony of us sitting there, in that moment, with no restrictions on us. In fact, reflecting on it, it feels like dramatic irony more than anything. If someone were reading a play about us sitting there reading a play about existentialism where you’re all stuck in a room, they’d laugh after reading the synopsis. Poor idiots, they don’t even know.

Certainly, there were times during the lockdown that felt a whole lot like this play. No one moved a lot, you parsed out your meals so you didn’t have to go to the store, and you argued back and forth with your significant other or roommate, threatening to risk it all and leave. This pandemic was certainly something that made me question my existence—should we all actually be here? Am I wasting my last few weeks on this earth holed up in my home, pretending to do schoolwork? But they are not the same. When I look out my window, I still have more to report than “zero.”

I chose to respond artistically to Beckett’s play. I wanted to express how I visualized the room that is the world of the play. Although my artistic skills aren’t up to par with the vision I had for the drawing, I’d like to explain it as though it were a perfect drawing that showed every subtlety I wanted it to. Firstly, the drawing is done in black and white (pencil). This decision was made to parallel the way that I envisioned the bleakness of the world. Clov frequently reports that there is nothing outside, zero, so I wanted to portray that with this drawing. That is also the reason that there is nothing drawn outside of the windows. I toyed with the idea of drawing waves outside of the left window, but I didn’t want to capture just one moment of the play. I wanted to get as many as I possibly could, so I chose to make it pretty bare, even leaving Clov out.

Although Clov is not drawn, he is certainly there. My reason for leaving Clov out is the way that I identified with him because as I read, I felt like I was seeing things from his perspective, so it’s almost as though he is either not in the picture because he’s in his kitchen or because he’s the one we’re actually seeing the drawing through. While reading, I felt like I was “supposed” to empathize with him. Since Hamm is covered in the drawing, it seemed right that Clov wouldn’t be in the drawing but would actually be in his kitchen, as he often covers Hamm when he leaves.

Another significant piece of the drawing that I’d like to explain is the floor. Through research, I discovered that endgame is a term used in chess (Stevens). It is the final third of the game, thereby being called endgame. I felt that this was an interesting thing to include in the drawing as the floor. I think that the title says a lot about the play itself in that there is not a lot left of the world, at least as far as Clov can see. There are only a few more crucial moves to be made before it is over. Nagg and Nell help to compound this idea as well because they are clearly at the end of their lives. It was interesting that Nagg did not die in the play because I expected him to die right after his wife did, but this play does a lot of unexpected things. The chessboard floor signifies that the characters are living within a world that is a game, and it is ending.

Endgame is an incredibly important play to be looking at during this time. There are similarities between our situation and theirs, but the difference is that there isn’t zero outside. There’s so much to explore that doesn’t put the lives of people in danger. As much as I identify with the characters and scenes in the play, especially during finals week when I haven’t gone outside since Monday, I understand that there is a fundamental difference between your entire existence being one room and having to stay at home for a few weeks in order to keep others safe. This will end, and I’m holding onto that as I reflect on this play.

Works Cited

Stevens, Rebecca. “Samuel Beckett: From Start to Endgame.” Samuel Beckett: From Start to Endgame | Steppenwolf Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, www.steppenwolf.org/articles/samuel-beckett-from-start-to-endgame/.

Beckett, Samuel. Endgame & Act Without Words I. Grove Press, 1957.