Endgame, as the title itself suggests, is about the end or an end. His opening words, "Finished, it is finished..." pervade the action, or perhaps rather inaction, that follows, and throughout the play Beckett, like Shakespeare in King Lear, employs a lexicon of decadence and nothing that implies an apocalypse. Clov sees "zero" when he peers into the afterlife with his telescope, the anonymous painter and printmaker sees only ash from the window to which he is dragged, while Hamm estimates that "outside here is death." The dialogue is full of references to the dead and dying, such as the mouse, the flea, Mother Pegg and Nell, and over and over again we are told that "There is no more..." (painkiller, bicycle wheels, sugar plums, jelly to name just a few) Yet language itself seems to be falling apart, running out: say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayCLOV: I'm back again, with the glass. (Goes to the window on the right, looks at it.) I need the steps.HAMM Why? Have you shrunk? (Exit CLOV with the telescope.) I don't like this, I don't like that. [Enter CLOV with ladder, but without telescope.] CLOV I'm back again, with steps. (He places the ladder under the window on the right, climbs up, realizes he doesn't have the telescope, goes down.) I need the glass. [He goes towards the door.] HAMM (violently.) But you have the glass! CLOV (interrupting, violently). No, I don't have a glass! [Exit CLOV.] HAMM This is deadly. (pp.24/25)This interaction is both comical and tragic as it is entirely unsuccessful and the work seems to repeat the same pattern of misunderstandings over and over again. Word and meaning are dislocated and the result is a complete and “deadly” breakdown of communication. The language of the work embodies the idea of ​​the end of a world in its contents, but also in its obvious inability to carry out its function. Therefore, as much as Clov and Hamm need each other, to us, the audience, they appear completely alone on stage as what they say goes unheard or unheard. The prolonged nature of the pauses that constantly interpolate their speeches are precisely demonstrative of a language as handicapped as the characters who speak it, and it is the silence, not the words, that conveys the tragedy. However, even before Hamm speaks to the audience an image of irreparable decay of the set and scenery is presented. A gray light illuminates a 'bare interior' that is somewhat reminiscent of a skull and in the center an old blind tyrant sitting in a dressing gown with his face covered by a blood-stained handkerchief. At the front of the stage are two ash bins side by side containing Hamm's legless and toothless parents, and all three are served by a limping servant. The viewer is bombarded with literal images of degeneration; the human race becomes waste material. Yet for all that visual and linguistic decay prophesies an apocalypse, the little boy Clov sees in the zero and death beyond the window can be seen as a beacon of hope and life that counteracts this desolation. The English text offers little in the way of illustration of this figure, but the French original is more forthcoming. In lines that Beckett did not translate, Clov describes the boy as motionless, leaning against a rock and contemplating his navel. This fetal position suggests birth, an idea reinforced by the image of the stone which recalls associations with Christ's tomb and therefore with a possible resurrection. Perhaps this little boy is a symbol of redemption, of possible continuation and renewal. But the sense of renewal in Endgame is reversed, and its tragedy lies not in the fact that the characters are condemned to die, but that they are.