Aesthetics of dis-ability: A Short Study on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame

Abstract

Locke, while writing his Second Treatise on Civil Government in 1689 states that all men by nature are ‘free, equal and independent’ but is everyone equal? We know by now that equity is the means through which true equality can be achieved but in order to make a change, we also need to accept the fact that ‘normalcy’ is nothing but a social construct. All those whom our society regard as ‘abnormal’, ‘incompetent’ or ‘non-productive’ have the right to live as much as ‘normal’ people do. When it comes to persons with disabilities, it gets even more complicated by the existing taboo. A sense of uneasiness and discomfort prevail whenever we confront bodies un-like our own. Some tend to sympathise while others tend to dismiss it altogether. Samuel Beckett tries to break this taboo by making use of characters in his writings who with their decomposing bodies, make an attempt to live the absurdities of life. His characters ‘stare at death with passionate attention’ but do not commit suicide because they are tenacious enough to live. Afterall as Molloy says, ‘To decompose is to live too’. The paper analyses Beckett’s Endgame in terms of disability and aesthetics. It aims to explore how the playwright makes use of theatre as a device to shatter the camera obscura that the bourgeoisie order maintains on bodies that it cannot contain. The able-bodied people witness man at his most vulnerable, striving to sustain by taking help of others thereby realising that co-dependency is evident and inevitable.