How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Act.Line). Every time a character talks counts as one line, even if what they say turns into a long monologue.
Quote #1
CLOV
All life long the same questions, the same answers. (1.29)
What are some of the questions that Clov might be referring to? Is he right? Does this mean that life is static? Where can we gain knowledge and where can we only accumulate questions like grains of sand?
Quote #2
HAMM
But we breath, we change! We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom! Our ideals! (1.107)
Notice how Hamm measures growth by decay, by what is lost. Is this a general commentary on the way that human beings change or is it peculiar to Hamm and Clov's situation?
Quote #3
HAMM
In the morning they brace you up and in the evening they calm you down. Unless it's the other way round.
(Pause.)
That old doctor, he's dead naturally? (1.250)
What do you make of the fact that Hamm begins by making a sweepingly general statement about life and then moves to thinking about a particular doctor? What is the relationship between the universal and the particular in the play?