Norton, 2521
Stage set - diagram
-- said to represent interior of skull - two eyes, etc.
Chess: "Endgame": Hamm, "Me to play" 2550
Stagy: Hamm (as bad actor), e.g., 2522-3; 2524; 2542: dialogue; ritual of story; 2549: "last soliloquy"; "underplot"
-- Clov: 2532 sees audience
-- measuring suffering, cf. Lear: 2523Post-holocaust: 2525 - two refs. Nevil Shute, On the Beach (1957)
Body: numerous references to -- smell, eating; Hamm sits; Clov stands
Language: meaning escapes, pp. 2523; 2533; 2538
Rationality: all we have? -- but -- absurd: measuring, 2531; 2539, 2540; infinity: 2522
Illusion: story of madman, p. 2537
Play ends as it began, 2551; could be circular -- repeated ad infinitum
Final meaning is that it cannot be made to mean anything. According to Wilcher (1976), play is a comment on "the inadequacy of approaching reality by trying to impose systems upon the minute-by-minute flux of sense impressions"
Document created March 18th 2001