Three men: a Greek philosopher, a Russian playwright, and an Irish man who speaks English but writes in French (kind of absurd isn’t it?) are standing in line at a vending machine. The Greek philosopher, upon realizing that he doesn’t have any quarters, turns to the others in line and asks, “Can either of you change a five?” The Russian playwright and the native Irishman, who now lives in Paris where he writes in French and then painstakingly translates his works into English by himself (what is this guy’s deal?), look at each other pensively for a moment and then say, “No.” Get it?
In both Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Samuel Beckett’s Endgame there is a complete lack of change in any of the characters’ lives. Under normal circumstances this lack of one of the most important elements of theatre would result in two plays that are utterly worthless and simply not deserving of the effort that one would expend while reading them. However, these are not normal circumstances, and these are certainly not your everyday, average playwrights. In both plays, the absence of any change is a deliberate choice that each author has made. In The Cherry Orchard the characters simply refuse to accept that the wo
. . .
rld around them is changing, and therefore never undergo any changes themselves while in Endgame Beckett uses numerous ambiguous elements to simply prevent any change from being achievable. This point comes in Hamm’s final monologue when Clov comes on stage dressed for the road and then proceeds to stand by the door. It is an element that requires the playwright to exercise a great deal of caution, attention to detail, and a disciplined commitment to the circumstances that have been set in regard to the boundaries of the play. This leads to another important factor of the play: Many things have changed outside of the presented time frame of The Cherry Orchard. It is the intention of each playwright that the reader’s examination of the play will then progress further into a self examination. Such is the case in the structured reality of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. There is one other point in the play, which also comes at the end, that leads the reader to believe that a change will occur. Also, when the characters ask specific questions about time they do not receive a direct answer.
Beckett’s masterful use of ambiguous elements in Endgame creates a completely undefined world in which the characters are forced to live. Thus the reader can see that Ranevskaya is refusing to accept that within a period of a few short weeks she will lose her childhood home, and therefore not experience any sort of change. The lack of action forces the reader to examine each play to a much greater extent than one normally would had everything been presented directly.
Approximate Word count =
1214
Approximate Pages =
5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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