Words and Stage Directions

Endgame's visual performance and self-reflexive dialogue constantly remind the audience that they are watching a performance by actors. Hamm broods: "All kinds of fantasies! That I'm being watched!" This tells the audience that they are part of the structure of the play, just as words, physical movement, lighting, whistles, dogs, ladders, windows, and silence play their roles. Beckett uses stage directions to create dynamic relationships between characters and the things they require to live: Hamm needs his armchair, and Nagg and Nell require their ashbins. Beckett creates a vivid physical world to complement the powerful and stripped-down dialogue.

Beckett presents the characters' inability to understand through abstract language and stagnant dramatic structure. Beckett has stripped down and broken apart his words and sentences. Words are able to contradict each other and are often elliptic. Clov utters the first line of the play: "Finished, it's...