Research on the unrepresentability of death in Samuel Beckett’s oeuvre abound in Beckett scholarship, but little attention has been given to the artist’s representation of caregiving to the dying in his plays. With reference to Martin Heidegger’s concept of care and Albert Camus’s idea of the absurd, this article analyzes Endgame (1957) and Footfalls (1976) by attending to Beckett’s dramatic representation of caregiving as undergirded by a sense of its absurdity. The almost 20-year gap between the writing of both plays highlights the development of an understanding that this sense of absurdity is never about the caregiver’s questioning of one’s obligation to the dependent but about how one chooses to respond to caregiving as an absurd predicament. The pertinence of such a representation of caregiving by Beckett lies in its poignant articulation of a complex experience that is often left unexpressed by caregivers who prioritize their dependent loved ones over themselves.

贝克特学术界对塞缪尔·贝克特作品中死亡的不可再现性的研究比比皆是，但很少有人关注艺术家在他的戏剧中对临终者的照顾的表现。本文借鉴海德格尔的关怀观和加缪的荒诞观，对《终局之战》（1957）和《脚步声》进行分析。（1976）通过关注贝克特对护理的戏剧性表现，其荒谬感增强了护理的基础。两部剧的写作间隔近20年，突显出一种理解的发展，即这种荒谬感从来不是照顾者对自己对受抚养人的义务的质疑，而是关于一个人如何选择将照顾视为一种荒谬的困境。贝克特对护理的这种描述的针对性在于，它对一种复杂的经历进行了深刻的阐述，而那些优先考虑依赖亲人而不是自己的护理人员往往没有表达这种复杂的经历。