ipl-logo

The Ideas Of Existentialism In Samuel Beckett's Endgame

945 Words4 Pages

This is an attempt to understand Samuel Beckett’s characterization, use of language and setting in his play 'Endgame' and to explore the manner in which it reveals his tendency to employ some existentialist concepts such as despair and anxiety. Existentialism is a philosophical movement which focuses on an individual's existence rejecting the absolute reason. There are a number of reasons for the concept of 'Existentialism' to come in the history of thought. Firstly, rational sciences could not prove that they were absolute, and thus, existence of absolute truth was put to question. Secondly, and more importantly people had lost their belief in the existence of a divine being, that is God, owing to the wars and losses they faced in these wars. …show more content…

His dramatic creations are haunted by an absence of meaning at the centre. In spite of this meaning-lessness, Beckett’s characters desperately strive to find a meaning for themselves. They are born into an irrational world. They life is wasted waiting for an explanation that never comes, and even the existence of such an explanation might be merely a product of their imagination , founded in their despair. Beckett’s drama is based on his perception of human condition, that is, being born and mostly living in pain, suffering ordeals, a short rough and unpleasant existence. Man’s needs and desires are all reduced. Therefore, “All Beckett’s work comprises a unity in which certain attitudes are expressed in different ways with much force and rare imagination: life is cruel and painful; failure is no worse than success because neither matters; what is important is to avoid giving pain to others and to share misfortune”, there is neither a meaning nor an explanation; there is and there remains only nothingness, thereby putting Beckett closer to existentialist beliefs which puts him close to the Existentialists. Life and its meaning gets reduced to cruelty, frustration and absence of hope revolving around the repetitive themes of birth, death and emo-tions like despair, anxiety and physical limitations. The reader is insistently and rather forcefully reminded that his existence is

Show More
Related

  • Outline For Ender's Game Essay

    400 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ender’s Game Outline Thesis Statement: Ender Wiggins is a bad person because he destroys and entire race, cares more about winning than his soldiers’ well-being, and hurts and even kills people. I. Topic sentence: Ender Wiggins is a bad person because he intentionally destroys a whole race. a. Evidence #1: He blows up and entire planet b. Evidence #2: He frequently fantasizes about killing buggers and agrees to go to a school specifically intended to train him to destroy them. c. Analysis: The fact that Ender is able to destroy a whole race without even thinking about it twice shows that he is cold-hearted. He is able to commit mass murder which is one of the many traits of being a bad person.

    Read More

  • The True Meaning Of Ender's Game By John Kessel

    1179 Words  | 5 Pages

    John Kessel makes a few good points about Ender’s Game and the damaging effect it has on the readers. Kessel makes his stance clear and expresses four main points that Orson makes during his book: Ender is innocent and perfect, Training equals intent, intention is based on morality, and you do not have to worry about the families who were affected by the deaths of both the Stilson and Madrid boys. After reading the book myself, the points above seem to be valid and they seem to make up the book. Ender is “perfect”. Early in the book(not even past the first chapter), Andrew Wiggin beats up a little boy named Stilson and shows no mercy as it is later said that he kept beating him to the point of death.

    Read More

  • Alienation In Sacrifice Wiesel's Novel '

    361 Words  | 2 Pages

    As being the hero who survived the tragic incident, he feels hopeless and empty. Having the sense of alienation from people around him, the existence

    Read More

  • Examples Of Existentialism In Grendel

    502 Words  | 3 Pages

    Existentialism is a philosophical theory that was developed by Nietzsche and many other philosophers in the 19th century. In the first four chapters of the novel Grendel by John Gardner, the protagonist and the narrator, Grendel tells a story of his adolescence. Like any teenager, Grendel encounters multitude of events which molds him into what he is; an existentialist. Through the use of diction, personification, and simile in the narration of Grendel, John Gardner illustrates the cause of Grendel’s existential outlook.

    Read More

  • Ender's Game Theme Essay

    352 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ender’s Game is an enthralling, award-winning sci-fi novel by Orson Scott Card. The book follows main character Ender Wiggin as he is brought to a battle school and trained to fight against the buggers, an alien race who started a war with Earth. Ender’s Game is a simple read at surface depth but once you dig deeper, it becomes something valuable. How the themes, plot and characters flawlessly interweave makes this an interesting book to read and be taught.

    Read More

  • Ender's Game Essay

    869 Words  | 4 Pages

    ‘Ender's Game 'written by Orson Scott Card is a novel about Ender Wiggin and his journey to save the world from the buggers. This text informs the audience about issues such as conflict, competition and technology that concern our society and offers interesting understandings about how the composer addresses these issues through the characters and storyline to teach us important lessons about our world. While some aspects of conflict lead to growth, conflict can also result in actions that people will regret. The novel ‘Ender’s Game’ constantly depicts Ender’s experiences of physical contact or man vs man conflict with another character. This is conveyed through the description “It was as if Ender had kicked a piece of furniture.

    Read More

  • Persepolis Existentialism Essay

    1744 Words  | 7 Pages

    The way that such intricate, specific, and divergent books and life events relate is quite showing that the choices we make do affect others and ourselves, our passions define us in positive and negative ways, and being alone in an indifferent world makes us more aware in the end. Hardship and toil prove themselves to be worth it because for Marjane, Meursault, and myself, the results of our hard work with teach us more strength and independence than before. Existentialism exists more than we can see, and its philosophy promotes learning from

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Frankenstein And Quicksand

    1786 Words  | 8 Pages

    Rita Felski’s view of tragedy being the failure “to master the self and the world” is at the heart of Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Both texts are concerned with the incapacity of defining and accepting one’s identity and the characters’ attempts to resolve this identity crisis by isolating themselves. This essay will argue that the fundamental cause for this tragedy is the lack of emotional connection from one’s family, which in turn prohibits one to sympathize with anyone, including oneself. In Quicksand, Helga Crane’s inability to become truly happy stems from her feelings of being an outsider.

    Read More

  • Essay On Ender's Game

    612 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Orson Scott Card’s book Ender’s Game, Ender is continually set up against impossible odds by the International Fleet, which is part of a plan to train Ender to fight in the Third Invasion and end the bugger wars forever. Ender’s trials are portrayed more convincingly in the book, as the book shows him struggling with the expectations placed upon him more so than in the movie. An important theme in Ender’s Game is that Ender is continually kept in the dark about the events happening around him. This theme is prevalent throughout the book, and sets the stage for the book’s climax, the Third Invasion.

    Read More

  • Grief In Nicholas Wolterstorff's Lament For A Son

    1002 Words  | 5 Pages

    It is first and foremost the grief of one person over the death of his son. Here the author accepts that he has grief because he has loved his son and that son is no more. As much he loved his son, so much is his grief. When we go through this book keeping in mind Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief, we find that the development of the thoughts of the author is also almost the same.

    Read More

  • Influences Of Niccolo Machiavelli's The Duchess Of Malfi

    1134 Words  | 5 Pages

    John Webster, the great Elizabethan dramatist was little admired during his life time. The Elizabethans failed to appraise his genius as a dramatist and after his death he fell for nearly two hundred years into the lap of oblivion to be brought back into the limelight by the criticism of such distinguished critics as Lamb, Swinburne, Rupert Brooke, who popularised his works and establised his claim to be recognised as a great dramatist of Elizabethan age. But now the tide has turned in Webster 's favour and he is recognised today not as a dramatist who carried forward the revenge theme in drama but as a great poet, and above all, a great moralist, who held aloft the moral vision of life at a time when the dramatists of the age were piling horror and glorifying murder into a fine art. This tragedy THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, the revenge is further degraded and the moral motive of the dramatist come to the forefront. There are some influences of other Elizabethan authors.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Family In Samuel Beckett's Endgame

    1175 Words  | 5 Pages

    TITLEEE Relationships between parents and their children are very unique and individualized. Some families are very close and have many shared memories. Other families have faced hardship and choose to put distance in their relationships. In fact, Samuel Beckett’s absurd play, Endgame, is full of unique family dynamics.

    Read More

  • Existentialism And Absurdism In The Stranger, By Albert Camus

    1021 Words  | 5 Pages

    Scanning through his past several years, he returns to his mother’s death and analyzes her choice to seek a lover at the end of her life. While before he thought it was strange and even somewhat aggravating, he realizes now, being so close to death, that people will enter a desperate search for meaning when their time left is fleeting. But at the same time, he reasons potentially as a coping mechanism, there is no difference whether he dies by execution later that day or in 40 years because he will be dying all the same. Together, these two realizations, though somewhat contradictory, create his bridge to Existentialism. By establishing these two points, he can allow himself to, “open up to the gentle indifference of the world - finding it so much like himself”(122), and apply whatever meaning he wants to life in order to make it as rich and enjoyable as desired, rather than drifting along as a pitiful being waiting for some greater power to guide him along.

    Read More

  • The Glass Menagerie Analysis

    1897 Words  | 8 Pages

    The objective of this paper is to study the reasons of Tom’s abandonment of his family and his perpetual anguish as its result. At the beginning of the play, Tom Wingfield tells the audience that he is the play’s narrator as well as a character in it. The play takes place in his memory. After giving a brief introduction of other characters and social background, he joins his mother and sister at the dinner table.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot

    1275 Words  | 6 Pages

    The characters are waiting in ‘vain’ for Godot(Sternlicht 51). They are like other human beings who continue to wait, to hope that what they want in life will come to them someday. They never mind how long they will wait. They try to keep some communication with the others or maintain people with whom their lives are linked. Beckett thinks that “the modern artist” is like someone in a trap because there is nothing to express but the main artist’s work, paradoxically, is to express.

    Read More

More about The Ideas Of Existentialism In Samuel Beckett's Endgame

Open Document