It is the concern for time the links Beckett with Chekhov. Time is an ungraspable present; the future is illusion and the past is loss. The suffering is ontological in the conflict between the promise of fulfillment and the corrosion of loss. Both Beckett and Chekhov overcome time by refusing to allow it to define them, either to save or damn: While something sought for is not attained, something unknown is preserved.