El Blog de Twanda

When I read End-Game, it was hard to visualize exactly what was happening on stage.  Watching the video in class helped a lot.  I also did not catch the reference to a chess game in the title, but it makes a bit more sense after having that reference. 

Although I don’t think Beckett intended for us to understand all of the situation in his play, the feeling of hopelessness comes through clearly.  The characters exude a lack of purpose, meaning, and dissatisfaction with their lives.  Hamm remarks that “this is not much fun . . .but that’s always the way at the end of the day.”  There is no purpose to their lives.  Hamm even asks why he was born, as if implying that he should not have been. 

The characters try to pray, but end up saying that God doesn’t exist.  He couldn’t in such a messed up world.  Ironically, Nagg’s story of the tailor also suggests that it is God’s fault that the world is in such a state, since he threw everything together in only six days. 

The only meaning that seems to be found in the story is the daily routine in which the characters interact with each other.  Every day is the same.  Hamm says to Clov, ” We’re not beginning to . . .to . . .mean something?”  Clov, of course, rejects this idea, but in a sense it is true.  Hamm needs Clov because he can’t walk or see.  Clov must find some purpose in being with Hamm, or why else would he stay for so long? 

At the first of the book when Juan told Abundio that he was looking for his father, Abundio said, “Pedro Parramo’s my father, too.”  This was puzzling to me at first.  Was Abundio really Juan’s brother, or was there more to it than that?  After finishing the book, I think that Abundio was not being literal in saying that Pedro was his biological father.  Although Pedro may well have had any number of illegitimate children based upon his habits of sneaking into the servants quarters,  I think that Abundio’s statement was a figurative reference. 

Pedro Parramo was in a sense a father figure to the whole village of Comala.  Everyone’s livlihood depended upon him.  Economically, legally, and spiritually, he controlled the town.  He owned the majority of the land.  Both the priest and the sherrif answered to him.  Dr. Ruiz Perez mentioned that one aspect of the novel included the migration of people from the rural areas into the cities.  Perhaps one reason for this movement away from the countryside in Mexico is that the situation in many rural villages was not unlike that of Comala.  One or a few wealthy landowners controlled life in these towns, and there were few opportunities for the poor to prosper, depending upon the whims of the landowners.  In this sense, all of the villagers look to Pedro as a “father.” The fate of Comala is tied to that of Pedro Parramo.  When Susana San Juan dies, Pedro say, “I will cross my arms and Comala will die of hunger.”  The narrator then states, ” And that was what happened.”  The vitality of Comala turned upon what Pedro did.  When he lost interest in Comala, it did indeed die.