With that, Beckett wanted the audience’s conscious mind to explore character development, narrative, and psychology. He wants each audience member to think what the surrounding of the play is really telling. As William states, “Beckett’s main device was to result the audience in a series of epiphanies on the nature of the conscious experience” (William, 2). He demonstrated each character as a representation of himself. He shows his conscious experiences with having the whole room being dark and to look like a house but only having the characters staying in one room; this represents his mind of being dark and trapped. As Davies implies, “Yet, these movements suggest three veins of inquiry, each embedded in its appropriate substratum: the relationship between the audience and the onstage characters, the interaction between the audience and the offstage world of the play, and how that relationship mutates when the auditorium becomes host to the playmakers”(Davies, 77). He wants the audience to see if they agree or disagree with their own conscious mind. The offstage connection in his play’s, played a big role with the audience trying to understand more than what is being portrayed.
Throughout the play, Beckett makes allusions to other objectives. One critic suggests that he makes a historical reference to French dramatist Antonin Artuad. His allusion to Artuad as the “Mad Mann” suggests that the time period of this play Endgame (Dilworth, 3). Outside references lets the audience of his plays knowing more and getting a different experience. Then, when Clov looks through one window and sees the ocean and looks through another and sees land, this suggests an allusion of place. The audience could be thinking they are in a light house or in a different place. This was a part of Beckett’s theory of pulling the audience to see more than the play its self, just what Brecht was portraying. Another critic, Daryl McDaniel, suggests the allusion of a chess game. He states, “Beckett told one of the actors, 'Hamm is a king in this chess game lost from the start … Now at the last he makes a few senseless moves as only a bad player would … He is only trying to delay the inevitable end … He's a bad player'” (Daryl, 3). This suggests that the audience can see the moves each character is making. Beckett's pawns are unable to progress in the battlefield that is their shelter. The audience has to realize that the play revolves around reality. The reality is imposed through theatrical references and techniques throughout the play, which Brecht was giving more social issues in his play’s as well.
Besides the references, Beckett liked to use stage direction to be tied into his plot. He shows that stage direction can give meaning to the play. Beckett used steps, and used the ladder as a way of representing life itself. He then used different lighting for different moods and music to go along with each character. Clov uses the ladder, but still can barely sees and same with all the characters. Then, something is holding back all the characters, which makes you think how or why the basics to the whole play are. The audience is to move away from the stage, to recognize the emotion between themselves and the characters. He wants the audience to move around with the play and really focus, which is why he has each character repeat their actions. He uses the repeating to let the audience know something will be coming. Stage direction and how the play is sought out, shows how Beckett used Brecht’s use of alienation.
With this in mind, Beckett uses language in his dialogue to demonstrate between cognition and confusion. How the words are used breaks down the characters ability to see the world around them. His use of self-reflexive dialogue informs the audience that they are sitting in a theater watching a play, alluding to the play as a "game" (Daryl, 4). In other words, he wants the audience to puzzle each word together and to think what the next move is going to be. For the audience to give their own interpretation, he gives vague and minimum details. He wants his audience to come away with conclusions and answers and be forced away from the easy plot. He uses words that make no sense at the time, but later in the play the audience will catch on. Many of the connections in Endgame bring to mind the complete confusion and the idea of “Who is first”:
HAMM: He comes crawling on his belly -
CLOV: Who?
HAMM: What?
CLOV: Who do you mean, he?
HAMM: Who do I mean! Yet another.
CLOV: Ah him! I wasn’t sure. (Beckett 48)
Specially, he uses his word choice to go over what the main idea. His word choice is very important on how his play flows. In Beckett’s plays the key situation is the confusion and often cruel reality in which the character’s display.
With the plot of the play, one important element of the conversational situation in Endgame is that Hamm and Clov are in an unconnected relationship to each other. Hamm holds a superior rank, while Clov hold a secondary rank. The different standings between Hamm and Clov are based on how they talk and communicate to each other. The difference in relation does not combine continually with any set speaking order. They can be as far apart, but either may speak initially. Another way of stating this would be the order of speakers in Endgame is more depending on what is really going on than on the set speaking order. There is no one main person speaking at a time. Beckett wants all the characters to speak out of order to make the audience comprehend at the end, referring back to Brecht’s feeling of absurdity.
Beckett and Brecht share similarities with alienation. Both Beckett and Brecht try to steer the audience into thinking critically and not to get caught up in the overall emotion of the play. Beckett uses stage direction and language to go into depth with his play Endgame. Beckett uses outside recourses and lets society know exactly the true meaning behind his plays. He tries to give the audience a sense of what he is going through such as the dark room, the loud noises, and character disabilities. Beckett and Brecht gave the theater a different aspect of traditional themes and motifs.
Works Cited:
Beckett, Samuel. "Endgame." Samuel Beckett Resources and Links. Web. 02 Feb. 2012.
Davies, Matthew. "Someone Is Looking At Me Still": The Audience-Creature Relationship In
The Theater Plays Of Samuel Beckett." Texas Studies In Literature & Language 51.1
(2009): 76-93. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Feb. 2012.
Daryl, McDaniel. Critical Essay on Endgame, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Dilworth, Thomas, and Mike Goodwin. "Antonin Artaud And The Madman In Beckett's
Endgame." Explicator 66.3 (2008): 143-147. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Feb.
2012.
Haney II, William S. "Beckett Out Of His Mind: The Theatre Of The Absurd." Studies In The
Literary Imagination 34.2 (2001): 39. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Feb. 2012.
