Modernism and Multiplicity of Meaning in Endgame

Needless to remind the reader that samuel beckett is an avant-garde playwright in the modernist movement. however, this article is an attempt first to demonstrate and elaborate on beckett's contribution to this movement in the realm of drama: the fact that he constantly explores the human character by permeating their consciousnesses and states of mind. to achieve this purpose, beckett establishes a paradoxically expressionless art which communicates a world of meaning through silences and pauses. second, the present article is going to deal with multiplicity of meaning in endgame: this demands an approach in a modernist sense-namely the study of motifs, patterns and binary oppositions-and also reading through the blanks and between the lines in a post-modernist deconstructionist manner namelythe reversal of the established binary oppositions. this is both challenging and simultaneously enjoyable for the reader since the play is structured so subtly that it endows the reader with the chance to discover and elicit a variety of interpretations from the text. therefore, in this study, the writer, benefiting from the critics' views, will tackle a humble attempt to deal with the above-mentioned interpretations without any claim of exhausting the meanings of this multi-layered text from which many other interpretations may boil out.