Intro
Samuel Beckett is famous for writing plays in which nothing happens. People just sit around, and they say very little… or they say a lot of nonsense. There are lots of big gaps, or "blanks," in Beckett's works.
Wolfgang Iser really liked Samuel Beckett because Beckett's work has so many blanks. Let's have a look at an excerpt from Beckett's Endgame below.
Quote
HAMM (gesture towards window right): Have you looked?
CLOV: Yes.
HAMM: Well?
CLOV: Zero.
HAMM: It'd need to rain.
CLOV: It won't rain.
(Pause.)
HAMM: Apart from that, how do you feel?
CLOV: I don't complain.
HAMM: You feel normal?
CLOV (irritably): I tell you I don't complain.
HAMM: I feel a little strange.
(Pause.)
Clov!
CLOV: Yes.
HAMM: Have you not had enough?
CLOV: Yes!
(Pause.)
Of what?
HAMM: Of this... this... thing.
CLOV: I always had.
(Pause.)
Not you?
HAMM (gloomily): Then there's no reason for it to change.
CLOV: It may end.
(Pause.)
All life long the same questions, the same answers.
Analysis
This exchange between Hamm and Clov is full of big blanks. Hamm asks Clov if he's "looked." He's probably (maybe?) asking if Clov's had a look out of the window. Clov's answer is that there is "zero" outside, which makes the audience wonder: is this the end of the world? Are Clov and Hamm among the very last humans who've survived some kind of apocalypse?
And what about "this… this… thing." What the heck is it? Whatever it is, Hamm and Clov have both had enough of it. But—they don't explain what it is, which means that we are left to project our own explanation of what this thing might be. Maybe this "thing" is boredom. Maybe it's life. Maybe it's the dead world that they live in. We can't be sure, and so we're forced to fill in the blanks depending on our own emotions, impressions, and perspectives.
In fact, Beckett's work is full of so many blanks that critics have interpreted his work in completely different ways. Some people read Endgame as a post-apocalyptic play. Others read it as just some empty exchange between two bored dudes. Some think it's a comedy, and others think it's a tragedy.
And that's the beauty of it. Because the play is full of so many blanks (just look at all those "pauses" in the excerpt above), we can make anything we want of it. The play forces us to take an active part in creating its meaning.