Beckett's EndgameWhile Beckett's works are often defined by their existentialist themes, Endgame appears to offer no resolution to the desperation and melancholy of Hamm, Clov, Nagg, and Nell. The work is full of overdetermination that confounds the efforts of critics and philosophers to construct a single, unified theme for the work. Beckett resisted any attempt to reconcile the problems of his world, offer solutions, or openly allay any fears. However, this superficial level of understanding that aligns Beckett with the pessimism of the modernist movement is ironically different from the symbolic understanding that Beckett promotes through his characters and stage. Beckett's work does not suggest total desperation, but rather that Hamm and Clov's fears of change, self-centeredness, and desperation contribute to their miserable existence. It opposes the modernist attitude of focusing on the subjective and internal state and reveals that the modernist's soul is superficial and hungry. Many scholars suggest that the room in which Endgame is staged is a post-war bomb shelter, built by Hamm, and that the nothingness observed outside is the result of a nuclear winter. While the interpretation of the Endgame scene as a bomb shelter is certainly reasonable, especially in relation to fears of world war in Beckett's time, it seems more plausible that the emptiness and death that exists outside the windows is figurative rather than real. In the play Hamm connects this nothingness to the condition of madness: I once knew a madman who thought the end of the world had come. He was a painter and printmaker. I had great affection for him. I went to visit him in the mental hospital. I would say... let it be half of paper... that the world could end. Beckett's ending is as complex as the post-war world Beckett experiences. He saw the desperation and boredom of Modernism struggling to cope with the new imagination and necessary growth; Postmodernism emerged, seeking new promise but still intimately connected to the concerns of modernism. He sought to restore hope for human existence, which is entirely consistent with Beckett's existentialism and the themes of Endgame. This conflict between the emergence of promise and creation in postmodernism and the death of modernism is characterized in the relationships between Hamm and Clov. Beneath the fragmentation and concealment of the text lies a clear and definite denunciation of the barren and arid state of Modernism which refused to engage with the world, and of the flourishing and promising future of Postmodernism..