Tyler van Opstal – Some brief notes on Beckett’s Fin de partie (Endgame)

    Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was an Irish writer best known for his works of tragicomedy and absurdism (written in French, Beckett lived most of his life in France), most famously the play En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot, 1953) which in its English translated version (Beckett served as his own translator) was declared “the most significant English-language play of the 20th century” by popular vote in 1999. Of greater interest to me, however, is his slightly later play Fin de partie (Endgame, 1957) which Beckett considered to be his masterpiece.  

    Endgame, a one-act play starring four characters, concerns a series of conversations between characters in a house that exists alone after the end of the world, with the sea to one side and the barren earth to the other. The principal relationship driving the narrative is that between cruel, blind, paralyzed, and self-absorbed patriarch Hamm and his younger manservant Clov. Though Clov often threatens to leave Hamm to his demise over the poor treatment he has had from his master for his entire life, for most of the play his threats are empty as he concedes that in the post-apocalyptic world “there is nowhere else” to be but by Hamm’s side (p 6). As unhappily resigned as Clov is to remain with Hamm, Clov’s presence does not bring any particular satisfaction to Hamm or the two other characters (Hamm’s parents, who are missing their legs entirely and reside in two ashbins). The titular Endgame is that of a chess match with each of the characters stuck at the end of the match, unable to win but not yet having lost.  

    While the absurd circumstances and events of stories like Endgame can make it more difficult to place them within the hero’s journey, with some study Endgame can be seen as being extremely focused upon one step of the hero’s journey, that of Atonement with the Father and eventual Apotheosis (Campbell, p 116-158). Hamm is the father whom Clov must confront, and they refer to each other in those terms at several points; ex. “Hamm- ‘It was I was a father to you.’ Clov- ‘Yes. You were that to me.’ (p 38).” Yet while Clov fails to atone with a merciless father, Hamm rejects his own “Hamm- ‘But for me, no father. But for Hamm, no home’ (38)” as his father sits in an ashbin feet away. Hamm cannot escape this reckoning however any more than Clov can, and Nagg (Hamm’s father) says to him “It wasn’t indispensable, you didn’t really need to have me listen to you [when you were a child] ... I hope the day will come when you’ll really need to have me listen to you, and need to hear my voice, any voice (p 56).” 

    Finally, though, for Clov the “helpful figure, by whose magic ... derives hope and assurance (Campbell p 120)” arrives in the form of a figure seen through the window, something small and in the distance that appears in Clov’s telescope. He becomes aware in a scene of apotheosis, declaring “I open the cell and go ... I say to myself that the earth is extinguished though I never saw it lit (p 81),” declaring his atonement to Hamm before leaving forever. Hamm returns the words of atonement to Clov, but there is no successful atonement for him with his own father- he calls out uselessly to Nagg in the final monologue of the play but is met with silence and accepts he has made it to his own end. 

Books quoted,  

Beckett, Samuel. Endgame and Act Without Words. Grove Press 

Campbell, Joseph. Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press