A one-act play set in a bare room with two small high windows. Hamm, blind and unable to stand, sits in a chair and gives orders to Clov, his servant, who cannot sit. Hamm's elderly parents live in dustbins nearby. Outside, the world seems to have run down.
The four characters bicker, tell stories and repeat their routines, always on the edge of ending things. The play is darkly comic and severe, a study of dependence, cruelty and endurance, often considered among Beckett's finest.