An Elegy On Identity Construction Foucaultian Study In Samuel Beckett's Endgame

The thesis tries to probe into the identity issue in Samuel Beckett's Endgame with the application of Michelle Foucault's theory including power discourse theory and body theory to search the protagonist Hamm's ceaseless endeavor to seek self-identity in the absurd and hopeless world. The author argues that in Endgame, Beckett continues his anti-traditional theatrical devices such as absurdity and grotesque to highlight the despair and loneliness of the protagonist. In contemporary society, this issue possesses profound philosophical significance: exploring discourse power in terms of politics and inspecting identity construction in terms of body and space.The structure of the dissertation is as follows.Introduction, the first part, provides background information on the play and the theoretical framework of the dissertation, presents literature review and the major arguments in the thesis.Chapter one focuses on the message discourse power bearing in Endgame. Meanwhile, this chapter dissects how Hamm spares no expense to control discourse power to guarantee his identity of king, the commander of army, artist and ends with failure.Chapter two begins with the physical matters of the body, psychological as well as social perspectives. This chapter aims to look deeper into Hamm's underlying motives of finding out the meaning of life and self-identity.Chapter three mainly deals with the space issue in Endgame. This chapter inspects, both in interior and exterior space, the process of building the identity of captain and absolute authority of dominating others' inner thoughts.The last part, which is the Conclusion, aims at revealing the significance of present study. analyzing the issue from multiple perspectives, It can be found that the difficulty in constructing identity in an absurd world. Although Hamm spares no effort to penetrate into his identity to get rid of physical and spirit confinement, the failure of identity construction is irreversible.