You choose -- answer fully any ONE prompt below . . .

1)  Any worthwhile story has a source of tension that propels the characters, and usually a central protagonist who must confront the problem en route to a discovery of self or other.  Endgame is a classic drama – but one which avoids some of the trappings and traditions of pre-twentieth-century literature.  What is the tension at play in this work?  Who is the protangonist and what is his/her discovery, if anything?  How does this tension contribute to the larger meaning of the work?

2) Why does Endgame open the way it does? Why does it end in a similar manner?  Where are they?  What happened to them that got them here and made them this way?  Why on earth are Nell and Nagg living in trash bins?

3) How is Modern Man like Hamm and Clov? Where do we see ourselves and our world in this dark episode?  What does Hamm want? What does Clov want? What’s their history? Why doesn’t Clov leave?

4) An odd title, Endgame.  What do you make of it?  What do you fathom Beckett was suggesting with this enigmatic wordplay?

5) Is this ALL just dark and depressing, as some have claimed, or is there some jocularity?  What purpose might the humor serve? (Hint: NOT just to offer comic relief.)

6) Beckett infuses this play with a range of Biblical and classical ALLUSIONS. What are some of your favorites?  To what end (significance) do these references speak?

7) Endgame is both a dark, sordid tragedy and a witty, ironic parody of life itself; as such, it has a little something for everyone.  I hope that – at the least – some parts of this story spoke to you directly.  Considering this, what are some of your favorite quotes or passages from the text?  Why do these excerpts resonate with you?

8) What does this play remind you of? Where have you seen similar characters, or a similar situation, or a similar treatment of theme?  What other literature, art, or cinema – or even world event --  reminds you of Endgame?

The Horsemen of the Apocalypse . . .

1) Why does Baby Suggs stop preaching and start focusing on color?  How was she "proven a liar"?

2) What is it that eventually divides Paul D and Sethe? Why does Sethe willingly say goodbye to him? What motif, ever present in the novel, underscores this insult?

3) Is Sethe's love "too thick"?

4) We discussed already how we might interpret 124 as a gothic symbol for Sethe's troubled interior, a representation of her haunted past that continues to plague her present existence.  Looking at it another way -- perhaps more universally allegorical -- what might 124 and its "ghost" symbolize? How does 124 relate to all of us?

I have something more to say . . . .

Here is the open-ended prompt you may use to start your own thread. Feel free to post an original observation, question, or elaboration from an earlier class discussion.  You may also respond to other students' comments here.  Every relevant, thoughtful, and original comment here garners points towards your discussion grade.

What cost, freedom?

Imagine yourself a slave, confined to the most deplorable, inhumane conditions and subject to another's every whim.  You have no rights, no voice, no lawful claim on life, and no expectations for a future.  Toiling in the field non-stop, seven days a week, with no respite from either the blazing 120-degree sun or the skin-frosting blasts of negative-20-degree days, your only rest is found in brief sleep on a scratchy straw bale in a decrepit hut you call home.  Occasionally, you are driven and whipped like a horse, an iron bit in your mouth. You have had your children ripped from your arms and sold to others; your little girl screamed and held out her arms for you, not understanding why you did nothing to save them and certainly not understanding the life that awaited them on another slave farm.  You have seen friends, and your own parents, hanged from tree limbs and left dangling for days to rot and stink in the sun.

            If this were – truly – your lot in life, would you risk death or torture to free yourself?  Honestly, pragmatically, to what extent would you go to breathe freedom?  If you did win emancipation, how far would you go to avoid capture?  At what cost freedom?  What if your kids were facing capture and a return to that life of utter debasement?