Cormac "Sammy" McBeckett
Reading and watching Beckett's play Endgame reminded me of Cormac McCarthy. Specifically, the sheer bleakness and utter dread the play embodies I find reminiscent of several of McCarthy's works, most notably The Road. The constant presence and/or looming threat of death worms its way into the discourse characterizing the relationship between what appears to be a father and son just as it does in The Road. In both works, one feels a palpable sense of time running out, of hope rendered a vague notion somewhere out in the cold, grey distance.
At the heart of both works lies a desire to understand exactly what's real, what's left, and how to proceed given the circumstances. Relationships are both pointless and essential, especially those between father and son. In The Road, the father-son dynamic is rendered moot because the father cannot raise his son in a traditional role, instead assuming the only role available, protector. Because father is protector, biology plays little to no part in the man's identity. Similarly, if the audience is to assume that Hamm is Clov's father, Clov merely helps Hamm wheel about while providing an ear for Hamm's rants. Again, biology becomes moot, as anyone could step in and fill Clov's role as helper to an ailing old man. Therefore, in the new world's-end nature of both works, reality is simply whatever's the most convenient.
When nothing matters and reality becomes intensely subjective, all that's left is emotional brutality. Ultimately, in the dark, post-apocalyptic, savage terrain of both Endgame and The Road, existence can be described in Hamm's most powerful line, "you're on Earth, there's no cure for that!" (127).
Goth summer.
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