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A review by stephh
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
2.0
This was a play I was supposed to read in my first year of uni and honesty I can't remember if I read it and chose to forget that memory, or never bothered. Either way, when I came to read it now it just wasn't for me. I like some modernist stuff but this one was just a bit too despair-filled.
Endgame is a play with four characters: Hamm and Clov are more central, but we also have Nagg and Nell, Hamm's parents who each live in a bin. The four are living in what seems to be a perhaps post-apocalyptic world. They are approaching death and the main focus of the play is the pointlessness of human existence.
This was an interesting play to read, and definitely worth a quick read if you're looking to read more plays or more modernist works. I can see why it's acclaimed as an important piece of literature, but it just wasn't for me. It's a play filled with despair and decay and utter hopelessness. There's not really much more I can say about it (and no real plot or twists to spoiler) - it's full of very specific conversations between the characters that reflect on a much broader scope of life. I gave this two stars because it kept be interested but I can't say that I enjoyed it at all (though you're not really supposed to I guess!).
Endgame is a play with four characters: Hamm and Clov are more central, but we also have Nagg and Nell, Hamm's parents who each live in a bin. The four are living in what seems to be a perhaps post-apocalyptic world. They are approaching death and the main focus of the play is the pointlessness of human existence.
This was an interesting play to read, and definitely worth a quick read if you're looking to read more plays or more modernist works. I can see why it's acclaimed as an important piece of literature, but it just wasn't for me. It's a play filled with despair and decay and utter hopelessness. There's not really much more I can say about it (and no real plot or twists to spoiler) - it's full of very specific conversations between the characters that reflect on a much broader scope of life. I gave this two stars because it kept be interested but I can't say that I enjoyed it at all (though you're not really supposed to I guess!).