Samuel Beckett's Endgame : A Structural Analysis

Hans-Peter Hasselbach

Modern Drama, Volume 19, Number 1, Spring 1976, pp. 25-34 (Article)

Published by University of Toronto Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mdr.1976.0006

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/496778/summary

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 Samuel Beckett's Endgame: A Structural
Analysis
HANS-PETER HASSELBACH

A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS of Samuel Beckett's drama Endgame may ap-

propriately begin with a comment once made by the French film maker
Jean-Luc Godard. Asked if his films had a beginning, a middle and an
end he replied, "Yes, but not necessarily in that order." A first look at
Beckett's play could lead to the same impression, but a closer view of the
seemingly gratuitous structure will reveal its intricate and functional de-
sign and show the legitimacy of Beckett's statement at his Berlin prod-
uction in 1967: "There are no accidents in Fin de Partie. Everything is
based on analogy and repetition.") In this paper I try to shed light on this
calculated pattern by examining the structure of the dramatic action in
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Endgame, thus disclosing Beckett's successful fusion of form and con-

tent. More particularly, my approach aims to show that the thematic ele-
ments combined in the play's title, "ending" and "playing," constitute an
opposition that becomes the basis of Beckett's dramatic structure.
In classical closed drama2 the structure of the action is governed by
the overall direction of the play; the parts derive from the whole. Each
single dramatic situation is a functional part of the whole, serving as a
taking-off point for the next stage of a continuing action, "in which the
decisions of the dramatis personae constantly transform the original situa-
tion and push it toward its final point of resolution."3 Thus the division
of the play into acts is more important than its division into scenes, since
the end of each act marks the end of a stage in the action.4
But when the dominant structural principle is not teleological mo-
tion but associative unfolding of actions, situations or ideas, then the

25
26 HANS-PETER HASSELBACH

scene becomes the basic structural unit. It is characterized by a greater

independence, and can be a paradigmatic segment which presents a facet
of the whole dramatic design. In such a play there is no causal relation-
ship among the scenes; they do not imply each other, as in classical
drama. Instead of a continuum of action there is a succession of scenes.
With this breakdown of classical structure comes a related change in dra-
matic subject matter: the plays take on a distinctly episodic character.
Instead of a well-wrought plot we have a central theme of which each
scene is an episodic variation.
These structural and thematic features are evident in Beckett's
Endgame,5 in which the author has chosen the scene as a basic structural
principle, although he gives no explicit demarcations of the scenes. By
omitting breaks between them, Beckett stresses an internal organization
based on consistency of meaning and coherence of mood in each new
context.
In his instructions for the Berlin production of Endgame Beckett
identified sixteen scenes as the smallest units of his dramatic structure. 6
1. Cloy's pantomime and first monologue
2. Hamm's awakening, first monologue and first dialogue with Cloy
and Nagg
3. Nell-Nagg dialogue
4. Clov-Hamm dialogue and Hamm's first wheelchair turn around
the room
5. Cloy's activities with ladder and telescope
6. Flea episode
7. Hamm-Clov dialogue with Hamm's prophecy, ending in toy dog
episode
8. Cloy's rebellion, Hamm's madman story, alarm clock episode
9. Hamm's "story"
10. Rat episode, prayer, N agg' s curse
11. Hamm's story continued
12. Hamm's second turn around the room
13. Hamm-Clov dialogue in mood of farewell
14. Hamm's "role"
15. Last dialogue between Hamm and Cloy, ending with Cloy's mono-
logue
16. Hamm's final monologue
This sequence of scenes constitutes an action in approximately the
shape of a classical Freytag pyramid, and in this respect can be consid-
ered a parody of traditional tragedy: "Parody means the use of forms in
an age when acceptance of them is impossible. It demonstrates this im-
 ENDGAME: A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS 27

possibility and thereby alters the forms."7 The following structure is ap-
parent:
Scene i exposition (initiation of action with exciting force:
"and wait for him to whistle me")
Scene ii-ix rising actin ("something is taking its course")
Scenes x-xi climax and turning point (Nagg's curse and Hamm's
following remark: "Our revels now are ended")
Scenes xii-xv falling action ("inding up" and final moment of sus-
pense about the small boy)
Scene xvi [virtual] catastrophe (glimpse of restored order; ta-
bleau)
The distribution of the scenes reveals the dramatic proportions of the
whole action:
exposition - rising action - climax I :8: I
turning point - falling action - catastrophe I :4: I
The two major segments of the action - rising and falling - are built on
a ratio of 2: 1; the caesura is the pause after Nagg's curse (scene x, p. 56),
and thus the rising action comprises twice as many scenes as the falling
action. The resulting pyramid is lop-sided, and its structure is analogous
to the conceptual movement of the action, indicating the rising and fall-
ing dramatic tension and pointing up Beckett's principle of reduction.
That is to say, the diminished number of scenes in the falling action is an
indication that we have moved closer to the end of all actions. Dramati-
cally and visually, this progression is realized in the disappearance of
N agg and Nell.
Beckett himself has given us an important hint concerning the curve
of tension in the action of Endgame. The degrees of temperature men-
tioned as weather reports four times in Hamm's "story" (00, 500, 1000, (0)
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reveal the play's changing levels of tension:

Hamm's story is just about the center of Endgame. Up to that point there
seems to be a steady increase, if not of tension (for that a developing plot
would be needed), at least of expectation of some development: 0-50-100.
The point of culmination is reached in the story. The return to "zero" fore-
casts the outcome of the play: in Nagg's curse of Hamm, which immedi-
ately follows the "story," the fall into despair is completed. This is the ba-
sis, the gray-black ground level of the play. Hamm establishes the zero
point with the words, "Our revels now are ended." What follows, the sec-
ond part of Endgame, is undisguised whiling away of time, mere procrasti-
nation of the end, the imminence of which is constantly being invoked. 8
This statement is helpful as far as it goes, but it must be qualified by
28 HANS-PETER HASSELBACH

the observation that procrastination of the end is a significant theme long

before the second part of the play. Hamm, a parody of Hamlet, tells him-
self in his very first monologue: "Enough, it's time it ended, in the shelter
too. (Pause.) And yet I hesitate, I hesitate to ... to end. Yes, there it is,
it's time it ended and yet I hesitate to - (he yawns) - to end.
(Yawns.)" (p. 3) The dramatic action of Endgame profits from these
efforts to put off the end as long as possible (death as the end of man, si-
lence as the end of the actor). Of course the play is not conceived as a
drama of action in which each scene moves toward a final resolution of
tensions. Rather it presents a static set of circumstances which progres-
sively manifests itself in repetition, duplications and echoes, in more and
more exalted, more and more intensified recurrences of the same situa-
tion.
The temporal quality of the play makes this structure especially
clear. Endgame projects no temporal frame of reference which would al-
low one to distinguish among the "last million last moments" (p. 83) that
constitute the play. Hamm expresses this atemporal quality when he
says: "One of these days I'll show them to you" (p. 4, italics mine). Days
and moments have become identical, "moment upon moment, pattering
down, like the millet grains of ... that old Greek and all life long you
wait for that to mount up to a life" (p. 70). Here Hamm picks up Clov's
time metaphor from early in the play ("Grain upon grain ... ," p. 1),
which he will again formulate as a conclusion at the end: "Moments for
nothing, now as always, time was never and time is over, reckoning
closed and story ended" (p. 83). The sameness of all moments and the
abstract quality of time are reflected in the vagueness and indeterminacy
of the recurrent temporal expressions: "formerly" (p. 2), "once" (pp. 6,
17, 21,42), "yesterday" (pp. 15, 20,43), "soon" (pp. 43 and 54) and "one
day" (pp. 36, 37, 81). The following passage is significant:
HAMM. Yesterday! What does that mean? Yesterday!
CLOY. That means that bloody awful day, long ago, before this bloody aw-
ful day. . . . (pp. 43-44)
The choice of temporal phrases reveals an antithetic principle in the
play's time quality, which points at once forward and backward. Besides
this dialectic countermovement of memory and projection, there is a sec-
ond kind of antithetic time principle in Endgame, an opposition between
progress and stasis. Stasis is expressed in Clov's answer to Hamm's ques-
tion "What time is it?" - "The same as usual" (p. 4); but another dia-
logue implies a definite period of time completed:
HAMM. Is it not time for my pain-killer?
CLOY. Yes.
HAMM. Ah! At last! ... (p.7l)
 ENDGAME: A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS 29

.Stasis is suggested primarily through structural duplications, repetitions

of words and sentences, and an intensified mode of playfulness. In play,
time dissolves into a multiplicity of moments, expectation becomes nar-
rowly focussed, and a sense of stasis prevails. We find this condition in
the first part of the action of Endgame, where, at the expense of linear
plot motion and thematic development, a force field of direct conflicts
between Hamm and Clov is built up through play. At the same time the
motif of temporal progression is introduced to counterbalance the static
moments and imply the beginning of a developmental motion:
"Something is taking its course" (pp. 13, 32); "Grain upon grain ... " (p.
1); "We're getting on" (p. 14 passim). Hamm himself finally realizes:
"I'm taking my course" (p. 42).
The ambivalence of "course" as a metaphor of progression reflects
the tension between linear and cyclic structure, which receives concrete
embodiment in the play: the spatially cyclic in the tum around the room,
the temporally linear in the running down of the alarm clock. Both lines
have relevance for the structure of the action. The stasis of the cyclic
structure is realized in the tableaux at the beginning and end of the play.
They form a kind of frame for the action, and the slight difference be-
tween them defines the minimal linear development that was possible for
the play, that "backward movement" implied in the opening scene:
" ... it must be nearly finished." (p. 1) On this point Beckett remarked
aptly: "Between the beginning and the end is just that bit of a difference
that there is between beginning and end."9
The dramatic occurrences between the two tableaux certainly unfold
in a linear way, though not as a piece of continuous action. For the
existential futility and absurdity of being is appropriately expressed in
the aesthetic structure of circularity and stasis, as contrasted with the
freedom of choice and action in classical drama. The structure of the ac-
tion can be depicted schematically as follows:
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Circular structure
of action

Linear down-
ward movement

This structural model of a circling linear downward line is associated

with a succession of scenes which is organized less according to a causal
30 HANS-PETER HASSELBACH

order or progression toward a conclusion than by disjunctive association

and episodic diffusion. Each scene grows out of some gratuitous circum-
stance or occurrence and, as it proceeds, indirectly prefigures the play's
end because the action is built upon zones of recurrent motifs. With
these considerations we encounter the most notable problem of Beckett's
dramatic art: how to end. In Endgame, this question becomes both the-
matically and structurally relevant, and since the play implies a meta-
phorically consistent world-view (the human condition as absurd -
"Hamm: It all happened without me" - p. 74), it cannot have a real res-
olution. Beckett carries out his rejection of goal-directed action and
finished plot with absolute consistency.
What we have in Endgame is a dialectical structure, an antithetical
design with features of both closed and open dramatic form: closed form
yields pyramid construction, linear movement, unity of action; open
form yields an exposition beginning at a time after the actual catastro-
phe, circular structure of action, discontinuity in the succession of
scenes. If these antitheses explain the tensions within the dramatic struc-
ture of Endgame, there remains the question of which kind of form pre-
dominates in dramatic development and in the creation of audience in-
terest and expectations.
As a starting point for describing the dramatic tension in .Endgame
we may consider Beckett's first play Waiting for Godot. What differences
are there between the dramatic situations and the constellations of char-
acters in these two plays? In Waitingfor Godot the suspense was concen-
trated entirely on the expected arrival of the elusive Godot; the charac-
ters were counting on help from without. In Endgame, on the other hand,
there can be no help from outside: "Outside of here it's death" (p. 9),
everything is "zero" (p. 29) and "corpsed" (p. 30). The center of interest
is not an expected arrival, but an expected departure. The dramatic oc-
currences in Endgame draw their vitality and developing interest from
the conflict between Clov and Hamm, which may be summarized with
the simple question, will Clov leave Hamm?
Since this matter remains undecided right up to the end of the play,
one may speak of a plot interest or expectation of a resolution
(Fina!spannung),10 which in terms of dramatic theory derives from closed
form. Indeed this sustained expectancy is the central motif of the play
and the basis of its thematic organization, but it does not suffice to hold
our interest for ninety minutes. The play creates another kind of supple-
mentary audience interest which can be called expectancy of amusing
particulars (Detailspannung); II it derives from open, rather than closed
dramatic form. Such dramatic expectancy focusses less upon the ending
than upon the doing of the action; it asks: what will happen next? Its
particular expectations become episodic variations of the central motif,
the suspense about Clov's ultimate decision: the question of whether
 ENDGAME: A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS 31

Clov can finally and completely separate himself from Hamm is reduced
to his efforts to withdraw from Hamm's presence as often as possible.
"Clov has only one wish, to get to his kitchen again, that must always be
evident, as must Hamm's constant efforts to detain him. This tension is
an essential motif in their game."12 The two modes of expectancy or sus-
pense are thematically coordinated; the expectancy of particulars should
be considered the actual moving force of the dramatic occurrences, be-
cause it is the means of dramatic realization for the motif of the at-
tempted departure.
In two structurally significant passages Clov rebels against his serv-
ant status. The first occurs at the end of the rising action, in scene viii:
"Do this, do that, and I do it. I never refuse. Why?" (p. 43) The second
occurs at the end of the falling action, in scene xv: "There's one thing I'll
never understand. Why I always obey you. Can you explain that to
me?" (pp. 75 - 76) The dramatic context reveals the difference between
these two conceptually identical reflections. The first is inconsequential;
he will continue to obey orders. But the second time words soon lead to a
liberating act: Clov hits Hamm with the toy dog and thus reaches the cli-
max of his public process of emancipation from Hamm. His act was also
prepared for by his metaphorical gesture of "straightening up," repeated
three times in scene xi. His progress from confrontation to emancipation
corresponds - on the level of the two modes of dramatic
expectancy - with a shift from expectancy of particulars to expectancy
of a resolution. Just as our interest in the first part was held by Clov's at-
tempted retreats to the kitchen, so in the second part it focusses on his at-
tempted departure.
The final thematic intensification begins with Clov's preparations for
leaving: "I'm going to clear everything away" (p. 57). This intention is
later underlined by his loaded reply to Hamm's question: "What are you
doing?" - "Winding up" (p. 72). Moreover, Clov has made personal
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preparations for going out: in scene xi he appears wearing boots, while

before he had worn "slippers." The development now focusses precisely
on the question "Will Clov go?" The turning point follows upon Nagg's
curse, which initiates the final process of reduction pointing toward the
end, and with the sentence "Our revels now are ended' (p. 56, italics
mine) the confrontation is finished.
During the confrontation Hamm had stopped Clov from leaving the
room five times in all, his success being indicated each time in the stage
directions with the phrase "Clov halts" (pp. 6,24, 35 [three times]). In the
second part of the play Hamm tries it again five times (pp. 78, 79,
81-82 [three times]). But Clov's urge to go to the kitchen has dimin-
ished: after ten exits in the first section there are only two in the second
section.
The rising dramatic tension building up to the end shows up also in
32 HANS-PETER HASSELBACH

the various references to the time and reduction motifs.

HAMM. We're getting on (ii, p. 14)
HAMM. What's happening, what's happening?
CLOV. Something is taking its course (ii, p. 13)
HAMM. What's happening?
CLOV. Something is taking is course (v, p. 32)
HAMM. We're getting on (vii, p. 39)
HAMM. I'm taking my course (vii, p. 42)
HAMM. We're getting on (xiv, p. 68)

If the repetition of such phrases during the rising action of the play
evokes a sense of passing time - to balance the stasis of "playing," the
falling action, in expectation of the ending, creates instead a feeling of
stasis - to reduce the process of "ending." After the turning point
Hamm says only once more, "We're getting on" (xiv, p. 68), and then at
the end a repeated "We're coming" (xvi, pp. 83 and 84). The difference
between the implied temporal movements toward an end in the first part
and the static situation before the end in the second part is reflected
grammatically in a change of tense:
HAMM (first part). What's happening, what's happening (ii, p. 13)
HAMM (second part). Do you know what's happened? ...
Do you know what's happened? (xv, p. 74)
The altered tense points to the altered dramatic situation: the initial
"something is taking its course" still permitted a rising action of "playing
before the end," but Hamm's statement" ... we've come to the end" (xv,
p. 79) signals the "end of the playing" (at least as a theatrical perform-
ance). The interval left open between Clov's "It must be nearly finished"
(p. 1, with Hamm's echo, "nearly finished" - p. 50) and Hamm's "And
yet I hesitate ... to end" (p. 3) closes with Hamm's announcement: "It's
the end ... " (p. 79).
The dramatic tension in the second part is also supported by the ad-
ditional references to the reduction motif, "There is [are] no more .... "
There are no more things, but there is still a consciousness of them. This
consciousness is deeply rooted, and produces conflicts with reality. The
double quantity of references to the motif of reduction in the second
part - a reciprocal ratio of 2: I in analogy to the relation between rising
and falling action - further accelerates the movement toward a conclu-
sion. The end is already virtually immanent in the beginning, expressed
thematically with the phrase "in the beginning is the end," and formally,
in the reduction references of the second scene. But it becomes dramati-
cally actualized in the second part (thematically: "we've come to the
end"; formally: in the increased use of the reduction motif).
My observations about the structure of Beckett's Endgame and its
 ENDGAME: A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS 33

modes of dramatic tension or expectancy can be summarized briefly.

Dramatic expectancy is established first of all through the open conflict
between the antagonists Hamm and Clov. As Beckett has said, their
"war is the heart of the play."13 Secondly, this open battle is reinforced
by each character's inner conflict. Hamm wants to end ("Enough, it's
time it ended ... "), but he procrastinates indefinitely ("And yet I
hesitate ... "). Clov wants to leave Hamm ("I'll leave you ... ") but
keeps on obeying him ("Do this, do that ... ").
Out of these conflicts come the moments of tension that are signifi-
cant for the play's structure. Indeed this nexus of intrapersonal conflicts
reproduces, on the structural level, the theme summarized in the title, the
conflict between "ending" and "playing," and thereby sets up the play's
two-part structure. Its two parts correspond with two dramaturgically dif-
ferent but thematically coordinated modes of tension or audience ex-
pectancy. In the longer first part (the rising action of the "playing") an
expectancy of particulars is dominant. Here the action is held together
by the episodically developed motif of Clov's attempted exit to the kitch-
en, a variation on the dominant, conclusion-oriented motif of his at-
tempted departure. This dominant motif of the play's shorter second part
(falling action) evokes an expectation of a resolution, which after the ris-
ing dramatic interest of the first part (playing before the end) creates a
rising thematic interest in the second part (end of the playing). This de-
velopment is supported through Beckett's use of the corresponding time
and reduction motifs.
My analysis of the structure of the action in Beckett's Endgame leads
to the following conclusions. First, the thematic elements of the title,
ending and playing, are reproduced in the structure of the action; they
have assumed structural functions. Second, the characters' conflicting
motivations correspond with the play's antithetic structure: disparate
formal features of closed and open drama; two-part construction with
dual modes of audience expectancy; and a dialectic temporal quality im-
plying both progress and stasis. Third, the construction of the action in a
proportion of 2: I (rising to falling action) with a reciprocal ratio of the
quantity of the reduction formula, permits optimal dramatic realization
of the "playing" motif in the first part, of the reduction and "ending"
motif in the second part. Here also we see the congruity of form and con-
tent.

NOTES

l. Quoted in Michael Haerdter, "Samuel Beckett inszeniert das 'Endspiel.'

Bericht von den Proben der Berliner Inszenierung 1967," Materialien zu Becketts
'Endspiel.' Berichte und Aujsiitze (Frankfurt/M., 1968), p. 54.
2. On closed and open dramatic form see Volker Klotz, Geschlossene und
34 HANS-PETER HASSELBACH

oJJene Form im Drama (Miinchen, 1960).

3. Peter Szondi, Theorie des modernen Dramas (Frankfurt/M., 1966), p.92.
4. See Klotz, pp. 68-69.
5. Samuel Beckett, Endgame. A Play in One Act (New York: Grove Press,
1958).
6. See Materialien, pp. 42-43.
7. Theodor W. Adorno, "Versuch, das Endspiel zu verstehen," Nolen zur
Literatur II (FrankfurtlM., 1961), p. 214.
8. Materialien,pp. 69-70.
9. Ibid., p. 75.
10. This terminology is to be found in Peter Piitz, Die Zeit im Drama
(Gottingen, 1970), p. 16.
11. Ibid.
12. Materialien, p. 66.
13. Ibid., p. 40.