Beckett’s theater and the old questions

Abstract

How to explain a dramatic work such as Endgame, by Samuel Beckett? This article aims at reviewing this question. At first, literary criticism has associated this play with the Theater of the Absurd and, by extension, with Existentialist philosophy, as if Beckett’s plays were a critic to the “metaphysical condition of the human existence”. In agreement with the philosopher Theodor Adorno, we believe that Endgame is not to be interpreted as an investigation on the “human condition”. On the contrary, we believe that play offers a parody of Existencialist philosophy and theater, and it is distinguished by its rejection of any conceptual discourse in contemporary society.