Endgame by Samuel Beckett - Essay Example

The play mirrors this chess approach by comparing it to life. Life is just like an endgame in chess where there are few moves left, but the actual end is unknown and unwanted. Hamm talks of how his life is close to the end and he would like to finish it. According to Byron (2007), when Hamm says, “I hesitate, I hesitate to end. Yes, there it is, it's time it ended and yet I hesitate to end” (Byron, 2007), he talks about how the end is not the simplest choice (p. 2).

To man, the world is seen as a source of suffering. Hamm says that his mother, father, and dog all suffer “as much as creatures can suffer”. He, however, insists that none of them experience “suffering that equals” his own. From this illustration, the world is depicted as not being understanding of other people’s pain. Repetition has been used by Beckett to emphasize certain themes and motifs of the play. For instance, the words ‘finished’ and ‘end’ have been used repeatedly to emphasize the nature of the end game. While Clov says, “Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished” to show the never-ending nature of his task, Hamm uses it repeatedly to ask if his servant can ‘finish’ him (Byron, 2007).