On the one hand, "The End" is much like the other stories in this first set. The narrator fits the pattern of at least slightly crazy, expelled, somehow deformed or defective (keeps talking about people being horrified when they see his skull), etc., etc. At the end of "The End," it seems that the character either commits suicide or dies naturally. Another thoroughly happy Beckett story about the misery of existence in a world where there is no meaning.
But I'm going to try to take a slightly different approach. Partly because I saw an alternate reading that I thought might be interesting and partly because I do get tired of analyzing the existential drone of horror, boredom and hopelessness. Instead of seeing "The End" as the tale of the last days of an individual who is far from healthy or sane, I thought it might be interesting to look at it as a story of his life as a whole.
Beckett begins, "They clothed me and gave me money." Eventually, after several readings, I asked, "So who gives us clothes and money." In my case, the first people to give me clothes and money were my parents. (Well, my grandparents may have beat them to the punch, ever so slightly, but you get the picture.) This led me to the initial thought behind the idea above – this isn't just about the narrators end-of-life, it is about his whole life. So, starting from this premise, where else does it lead us?
The narrator says that the money was "to get me started." This part is the story of a beginning. The next sentences talk about how the narrator will need to get more money when this is gone, and shoes and so forth, suggesting a child leaving home for the first time to make his way in the world.
Then Beckett tells us that, "The clothes… were not new, but the deceased must have been about my size." He has inherited his clothes from a dead man, much as he inherited his ancestry, his genes and environmental effects on his psyche from a man who "died" (to use the term in the Shakespearean, Much Ado About Nothing sense). It's also worth noting that the dead man was "about [his] size" but "a little shorter, a little thinner." Children are often about the same size as their parents unless there is a marked disparity in their parents' sizes. This is simple genetics. It is also worth noting that, historically, humans have become taller over the centuries as food supplies and other health factors have improved, so it would not be unusual for a child to be slightly taller than his father, but not so much so that he couldn't wear his father's clothes.
The narrator asks for his old clothes back, but the institutions warders have destroyed his clothes. He cannot go back to them. They are discarded much as a caul might be discarded, or the afterbirth. Much as it is impossible to literally return to the womb. The removal of the bed linens and breakdown and removal of the bed (79) also fit this pattern. Perhaps a better analogy for these discarded components is the amniotic fluid, which is lost at the beginning of the birth process (when the mother's water breaks).
The narrator also uses this juncture to mention that he wants a different hat, one he can pull down over his face because he "could not go about bare-headed, with [his] skull in the state it was" (79). Infants are born with soft spots in their skull to ease the birthing process. This deformity of the skull suggests this condition. In most children, these soft spots close as the skull matures, but some children have a condition that leaves the soft spots open for years or permanently. Perhaps the narrator is simply referring to the usual case, or perhaps he has an effective soft spot in his skull that lets in things he would rather keep out.
Not wishing to leave, the narrator draws out his time in the institution. He asks if he could stay if he could make himself useful (80). His warder, Mr. Weir, tells him he cannot be useful and must leave. In a similar way, a child takes from the mother's body and offers little in return beyond possibly a sense of emotional wellbeing. At a certain point, the charity of the mother's body must cease. The child must leave. It is not useful to the body anymore.
Still longing to linger, the narrator gets permission to wait in the vestibule of the institution until the rain ends or until six o'clock. Likewise, a child in a difficult birth seems to linger in the womb or in the birth canal. Finally, an intern tells him that, with the rain ended, he must leave, and exits the institution, born into the world.
The next image is walking through a garden in the beautiful post-rain light and seeing a child "stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, ask[ing] his mother how such a thing was possible" (81). This echoes the newborn's initial stretching, grasping motions. The doubtless amazement as it begins to process light that is unfiltered by the mother's body. The sensory rush that is the infant's first, direct observation of the new world, the new womb, in which it will live.
The mother's response is telling. "F--k off." Not only is the new world amazing, it is horrifying. Horrifying for its sensory overload. Horrifying for its dryness. Horrifying for its coldness. Horrifying for its silence – the absence of the steady sounds of the mother's body that the newborn has always known. Horrifying for its clamor of strange, sharp, loud, irregular, confusing noise. The child is effectively thrust into the world unprepared. It feels like it's mother has rejected it, told it to f--k off.
The narrator remembers he "[forgot to ask] Mr. Weir for a piece of bread." The newborn is suddenly without food. Everything it has needed was supplied by the mother directly. Now feeding is mediated by the mouth. It is soon hungry, looking for food, water. Even waste removal is more complicated. But there is no turning back. Departure is complete. There is no return to the mother's body. The child has been born.
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