Politics of existence in Beckett's endgame and waiting for godot: Yesterday as the only timeframe, and egocentric characters

Abstract

The aesthetic and epistemological implications of time consciousness have been profoundly treated by Samuel Beckett throughout his writing for forty- five years. Time, in Beckett's two masterpieces Waiting for Godot and Endgame, functions not as an escape from the present by means of the fullness of memory, but as a sad reminder of the past cut off from the present experience. As a reminder of the past, "yesterday" is the only time process observed to reveal the fullness of the characters' memory and existence. In Endgame, "yesterday" is a melancholy which evokes the break-up of a relationship of Nagg and Nell, Hamm and his parents, and Clov and Hamm and their tragic memories they put behind; while in Waiting for Godot "yesterday" is the merciless and insidious flux of time which uncovers the metamorphosis throughout the limited lifespan of Vladimir and Estragon. On the other hand, though Beckett projects the existence of the characters within the frame of "yesterday," he puts a few characters to the center, both metaphorically and realistically. Characters' egocentric depiction is interrelated to the modernity and what the two world wars introduced: The individuality and alienation of the characters in the modern community. This paper aims to reveal Beckett's narration of "yesterday" as a history narrative and the depiction of egocentric characters to show the challenge for existence in his two magna opera: Endgame and Waiting for Godot.