Misery and Suffering Theme Analysis

Although it’s not always entirely clear what the characters in Beckett’s Endgame suffer from, it’s overwhelmingly apparent that they are miserable. Hamm, in particular, considers the nature of his own suffering, wondering at the beginning of the play if other people could possibly suffer as much as he himself suffers, eventually deciding that they must indeed experience misery as acutely as he does. Of course, it’s not hard to discern why he’s in agony—after all, when the audience first sees him, he has a bloody handkerchief covering his face. A blind man unable to move on his own, he sits in a bare room and depends entirely upon Clov, frequently asking for a painkiller that Clov never lets him have. This suggests that Hamm is in a constant state of pain, ostensibly explaining why he thinks of himself as suffering. However, Clov also upholds that he himself miserable, telling Hamm at one point that he has never experienced even a moment of happiness. Unlike Hamm, though, Clov doesn’t suffer from any readily apparent afflictions, though he seems to suffer all the same. This is because the kind of suffering that takes place in Endgame has little to do with physical pain or discomfort. Rather, it has to do with what Beckett sees as the inherent painfulness of the human condition, something Hamm insists cannot be cured. Accordingly, Endgame is a play that frames misery and suffering as integral to the human experience.

Hamm believes that all living beings are inherently miserable, and he yearns to find an end to the suffering that comes with existence. His preoccupation with misery emerges early in the play, when he first wakes up and removes a bloodied handkerchief from his face. Yawning, he asks himself if there could possibly be misery greater than his, wondering if his father, mother, or dog experiences the same amount of suffering as him. Thinking for a moment, he concedes that they must “suffer as much as such creatures can suffer,” going on to add that this must mean their suffering is equal to his own. This illustrates that Hamm thinks all living “creatures” are equally miserable. And since a human and a dog undoubtedly experience life differently, it follows that life itself must be the very thing that causes their suffering, since existence is the only thing that all living “creatures” have in common. This, perhaps, is why Hamm is so eager throughout the play to reach some kind of ending. “Have you not had enough?” he asks Clov, implying that Hamm sees death or change as the only ways to escape misery and suffering.

Whereas Hamm intuits that suffering is part of existence but constantly complains about it, his mother, Nell, also accepts suffering as integral to the human experience, but embraces it. “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness,” she tells her husband, Nagg. This, however, doesn’t mean that she laughs at sorrow. Rather, she registers misery as deeply funny without feeling the need to laugh. “Yes,” she says to Nagg, “it’s like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don’t laugh any more.” In this moment, it becomes clear that Nell is perhaps the only person in Endgame who makes peace with suffering, since everybody else rails against it in one way or another: Hamm hopes it will end, Clov thinks he can escape it by striking out on his own, and Nagg seeks comfort in worldly delights. Interestingly enough, Nell is also the only person who manages to unburden herself of life’s miseries by dying. Indeed, Hamm and the other characters are left to continue their struggles with life’s wretchedness. And even though Hamm knows that suffering is unavoidable—at one point exclaiming to no one in particular, “[…] you’re on earth, there’s no cure for that!”—he fails to fully reconcile himself with this unfortunate condition in the pragmatic yet good-humored way that Nell does. Hamm therefore represents one of life’s inherent dilemmas, as he wants his suffering to end but also wants to continue living in order to experience life without suffering—something Beckett intimates is impossible, since misery is unavoidably part of existence. This means, unfortunately, that one can never actually experience the absence of suffering.