STUDY QUESTIONS

Endgame
1. In what way would you say that Endgame is a play by Beckett treating
issues and using techniques present in his other plays as well.
2. Endgame has two settings: the room and the landscape described by Clov
outside the room. What is the significance of each one and how do they
interact.
3. Consider the possibility of Hamm and Clov imitating/performing the process of
departure (Hamm dying and Clov leaving him) rather than experiencing it.
4. What is the significance of Hamm’s story or chronicle, a story within the
play’s story.
5. In what sense does the possibility of Clov being Hamm’s adopted son
affect the play?
6. Is the play about the end of a game or about a game of ending?

The Caretaker
1. Examine the setting and try to understand its significance for each
individual character.
2. What is the tramp’s intention in Act I.
3. How does Mike try to manipulate Davies.
4. Why does Aston bring Davies home.
5. Why do the two brothers make Davies their caretaker?
6. What is the significance of the ending?

Krapp’s Last Tape

1. Identify differences and similarities between the three Krapps.
2. What role have women played in his life? Mother, Nurse, girlfriends,
whore, fictional characters.
3. What is the significance of whiteness and blackness or light and darkness
4. How is subjectivity constructed through this “recorded” journal?

Play
1. How does the spot of light affect the play (both the narrative and the
speakers) in creating silence, darkness, interruptions.
2. The play is written in the form of a dialogue. How does it differ from the
conventional function of a dialogue as regards the organization of material,
events, time, ideas, references.
3. Consider the conflict between on the one hand coherence and power and
on the other fragmentation and incompleteness. Is the conflict related to
issues of oppression and resistance. Interrelate visual image and narrative
(dis)order.

Footfalls
1. How is M’s narrative related with the Voice’s narrative. Identify affinities
and contradictions between body and voice.
2. How do you understand M’s basic concern.
3. What is the significance of M’s disappearance in the end.

Catastrophe
1. How does political and aesthetic oppression interweave in the play.
2. Consider the relationships of power between the three characters.
3. Consider the use of the Protagonist’s body as an object both for the
characters in the play and for the audience in the play and of the play.
 Landscape
1. Describe Beth’s character.
2. Who may be the man she describes and what does he represent in her life.
3. What kind of a landscape does the title refer to?
4. Why is the action situated in a kitchen.

Silence
1. How does Rumsey differ from Bates?
2. How does Ellen differ from the men?
3. Justify the play’s title and the choice of the setting.

Mountain Language
1. What is the relationship between language and oppression.
2. What are the implications embedded in the urban and the pastoral.
3. Silence as a sign of resistance or impotence.
4.The play’s position about the relationship between central official and
minority culture.

Family Voices
1. Describe the relationship between mother and son
2. Describe the relation between father and son
3. How do the substitute family relations function