nagg and nell

They can be 55-gallon drums or large trash cans or both, but whenever I see two of them side by side, I can’t help but think of Nagg and Nell. Hamm’s poor parents, cast away in dustbins to live out the remainder of their lives as trash-already-taken-out and ready to be set upon the curb. The portrayal of their existence is devastating but also humorous in Beckett’s Endgame. Nagg has a line that I believe to be one of the cruelest in all of modern drama.  “I hope a day will come when you’ll really need to have me listen to you, and need to hear my voice, any voice...Yes, I hope I’ll live till then, to hear you calling me like when you were a tiny boy, and were frightened, in the dark, and I was your only hope.” It’s hard to take, but it’s beautiful because the audience can immediately ascertain that it comes from a place of great suffering. And it reiterates a truth—we all need someone to listen, truly listen, so that we know we exist and mean something.