If Waiting for Godot shows its two heroes whiling away the time in a succession of desultory, and never-ending, games, Beckett's second play deals with an "endgame," the final game in the hour of death.
Waiting for Godot takes place on a terrifyingly empty open road, Endgame in a claustrophobic interior. Waiting for Godot consists of two symmetrical movements that balance each other; Endgame has only one act that shows the running down of a mechanism until it comes to a stop. Yet Endgame, like Waiting for Godot, groups its characters in symmetrical pairs.
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