Clov steps onto the stage at the beginning of Endgame and announces that “it’s finished” (6). In this world, however, nothing is ever finished. The characters are caught in routines and cycles that define their lives. Within the space of just a few words, Clov has seemingly acknowledged this. He negotiates down from his initial certainly, saying “it must nearly be finished” (6). The revision is a concession to the ambiguous nature of existence in his world, turning the certainty of the linear passage of time into a trap from which he is desperate to break free. The play is filled with these routines and cycles. Clov cares for the other characters, performing the same tasks in the same order every day. Nagg launches into a story that Nell, his wife, knows all too well. She finds the repetition exhausting but listens anyway. This is true of all the cycles, from Clov’s routine to Nagg’s repeated story: The endless cycles are exhausting and oppressive, but the characters cannot imagine any other form of existence.

Hamm loathes the idea of cycles even as he is trapped in one.