The Deformed Image of Man in Beckett’s Endgame

Abstract

As an influential Irish playwright in twentieth century and a Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1969, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is known by his association with “The Theatre of the Absurd” which was initially coined by Martin Essilin’s The Theatre of the Absurd (1961) in which alienation, suffering and meaninglessness of life were stressed on. In Endgame, originally written in French Fin De Partie (1957), Beckett presents a blind, disabled, and ill man whose goal in life is disappeared. Life to that decayed and suffering man is meaningless, aimless, shapeless, and senseless. The aim of this paper is to focus on such an image, to explore the reasons behind, and to prove whether it is a real image of modern man or a reflection to psychological, sociological, or even cultural issues.