Endgame

A towering achievement in the career of Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett (1906-89), Endgame ranks among the finest works to emerge from the French theater of the absurd. First produced in 1957, Endgame brilliantly captures the essential vulnerability and absurdity of human beings in its presentation of the blind and paralyzed Hamm, his lame servant Clov, and Hamm's elderly, ash-bin-confined parents Nell and Nagg, all confronting questions of existence and purpose amid seeming hopelessness. That this one-act drama, which the Irish-born Beckett produced in not only French but English and German versions, has unceasingly attracted critics and audiences world-wide testifies to its endurance as one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century drama. Though studies on Beckett and his contributions to fiction, poetry, and drama are legion, The Ashbin Play offers a refreshing new approach to this singular work. Analyzing the play by way of Beckett's own delineation of a sixteen-section structure, Arthur N. Athanason presents an innovative, spirited explication that is at once accessible and thought-provoking, its focus squarely on Endgame as a compelling live performance rather than a philosophical or biblical "mind game." Separate chapters place the work in its historical, literary, and critical contexts; examine the play section by section in terms of Beckett's scheme; and offer probing close-ups of each of the four characters. Through his engaging writing style and expert synthesis of a wealth of Beckett scholarship, Athanason has produced a winning critical study that will inform and stimulate thinking among students, scholars, and general readers.