The Failure of Man’s Dominance over the World in the Beckettian Drama: Endgame Case Study

Abstract

This article leads a phenomenological reading towards the dramaturgy of Samuel Beckett and more specifically his Endgame with recourse to the doctrine of Merleau-Ponty. By mapping out a drama that decentralizes subject-ivity, Beckett’s Endgame textualizes the subversion of the constancy of identity (“etre-pour-soi”) of the modern man who holds a dichotomous look on subject and object in his dominating view on the world. From this perspective, Endgame exudes an atmosphere of existential Angst which peaks in a potential way of being that prevails in the hope for an authentic life but yet at the same time falls in a cosmic exile that emanates from man’s failure in his dominance over the world. Here, the examples of the Hegelian master-bondage concept and experimental psychology are felicitous reflections of this tragic relegation of man. Accordingly, registering the Pontian phenomenology of disembodiment delineates the characters of the Endgame as (in)human beings lost in a meaningless space that abandons all attempts to influence the progress of the mechanistic material world they live in. Nevertheless, this case study traces the humanistic resonance of man to bestow new methods of exploring Beckett’s ‘art of failure’ as a relevant aesthetic reaction of the destabilized man in the modern world.