The Elusive Nature of Time: Temporality and Perseverance in Endgame Mack Hammond College

Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame presents time in a way that no human has previously had to experience or comprehend. Consequently, when the characters of the play attempt to make sense of their situation, they often seem confused and disoriented. This feature of the drama is brought about by many different efforts to converse and explain the present that the characters share, but all of them fail to express and accept the true feeling of nothingness that the play’s setting provides.

At the very beginning of the play we’re given insight into the desperate situation that the characters find themselves in, mainly the idea of their time running out or having already ran out. Clov’s opening lines speak toward the feeling that something, though not described in words, is coming to an end, and with little imagination you can figure that the something that he is referring to is his everything: their lives. He speaks tonelessly, “Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished” (Beckett). Clov appears to be trying to rationalize what is happening, or what is about to happen. The barren wasteland that they are living in is the residue of a world that was, which makes you question if he is speaking of the past world...