Undecidability in Beckets The Endgame Essay -- Samuel Becket Postmode

This paper aims to study postmodern element of undecidability in Samuel Becket's Endgame. As Butler and Davis holds, "What is different about Becket is not that he provokes a critical response ... but the protean, open-ended, 'undecidable' and inexhaustible quality of the challenge he offers" (168). Endgame like Becket's other plays is in a way that, as Wittgenstein notes, is nothing more than "language play" between characters and although there are some minor actions there are not in such a way to affect the play, moreover it is their vague utterances that make the play undecidable for the reader to make out what is happening. Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle in their An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory explain the term undecidability as: Undecidability involves the impossibility of deciding between two or more competing interpretations ... classical logic is founded on the law of non-contradiction: something cannot be both A and not A at the same time. The postmodern gives particular emphasis to ways in which this law may be productively questioned or suspended. Undecidability splits the text, disorders it. Undecidability dislodges the principle of a single final meaning in a literary text (232). One of the most significant and undecidable subject of the play, that perplex the reader just at the very beginning of the play, is its title. Vivian Mercier points out that, the title reminding both of the ?ending? and ?end game? in chess (117). Considering the latter assumption, it suggests that red-faced Hamm in his wheel chair is the Red King, who can only be moved one square at a time in any direction and Clov, also red-faced, is more mobile Red chess man with his unsteadily walk... ... The Norton Anthology of English Literature: . The Major Authors. Ed. M. H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 2001. 2657-84. Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. ?An Introduction to Literature, Criticism . and Theory.? 2nd ed. London: Prentice Hall Europe, 1999. Hale, Jane Alison. ?Endgame: How are your eyes?.? The Broken Window: . . Beckett?s Dramatic Perspective. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1987. Mercier, Vivian. ?How to Read Endgame.? Ed. Andonian, Cathleen Culotta. . The Critical Response to Samuel Becket. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, . 1998. Pattie, David. ?The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Becket.? London: . . Routlege, 2000. Undecidability in Becket's The Endgame Essay -- Samuel Becket Postmode This paper aims to study postmodern element of undecidability in Samuel Becket's Endgame. As Butler and Davis holds, "What is different about Becket is not that he provokes a critical response ... but the protean, open-ended, 'undecidable' and inexhaustible quality of the challenge he offers" (168). Endgame like Becket's other plays is in a way that, as Wittgenstein notes, is nothing more than "language play" between characters and although there are some minor actions there are not in such a way to affect the play, moreover it is their vague utterances that make the play undecidable for the reader to make out what is happening. Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle in their An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory explain the term undecidability as: Undecidability involves the impossibility of deciding between two or more competing interpretations ... classical logic is founded on the law of non-contradiction: something cannot be both A and not A at the same time. The postmodern gives particular emphasis to ways in which this law may be productively questioned or suspended. Undecidability splits the text, disorders it. Undecidability dislodges the principle of a single final meaning in a literary text (232). One of the most significant and undecidable subject of the play, that perplex the reader just at the very beginning of the play, is its title. Vivian Mercier points out that, the title reminding both of the ?ending? and ?end game? in chess (117). Considering the latter assumption, it suggests that red-faced Hamm in his wheel chair is the Red King, who can only be moved one square at a time in any direction and Clov, also red-faced, is more mobile Red chess man with his unsteadily walk... ... The Norton Anthology of English Literature: . The Major Authors. Ed. M. H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 2001. 2657-84. Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. ?An Introduction to Literature, Criticism . and Theory.? 2nd ed. London: Prentice Hall Europe, 1999. Hale, Jane Alison. ?Endgame: How are your eyes?.? The Broken Window: . . Beckett?s Dramatic Perspective. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1987. Mercier, Vivian. ?How to Read Endgame.? Ed. Andonian, Cathleen Culotta. . The Critical Response to Samuel Becket. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, . 1998. Pattie, David. ?The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Becket.? London: . . Routlege, 2000.