English theatre of the XIX and XX centuries

2nd Comparative analysis of writer’s evolution through his plays

The chosen theme is The evolution in the treatment of memories in Samuel Beckett’s plays: Waiting for Godot (1956); Endgame (1957) and Krapp’s Last Tape (1958). The three plays were written in successive years so we can find a kind of change in the way that the author expressed the theme commented above, but maintaining some shared elements.

We can find several allusions to the past in Samuel Beckett’s plays; but these reminiscent elements are used in different ways and with different purposes.

For example, in Waiting for Godot, Beckett uses memories as a way to keep one of his characters with faith on life; Vladimir. He remembers his past with nostalgia because he is not happy with his lifestyle so he also uses it as a way of passing the time. “Vladimir: Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel tower…We were presentable in those days. Now It’s too late…”  Vladimir has a very retentive memory, or at least he thinks so. On the other hand, the other character, Estragon, lacks of recent memories because he is very selective on the things he keeps in mind; he only remembers what is important to him in an emotional way. “Estragon: I remember the maps of the Holy Land…Very pretty. That’s where we’ll go, I used to say…for our honeymoon…We’ll be happy.”  The completely absence of real activities out of routine of ‘waiting for Godot’ retain both of them in a timeless life, in a constant sensation of being in a hollow present where is hard to know what day it is or in which season they are; where all that matters comes from the past or is near to come in the future.

Something very similar occurs in Endgame, where two characters, Hamm and his father Nagg, spend their hideous and meaningless days remembering the good old days and later, the terrible facts which made their lives change into what they are now. “Hamm: Is Mother Pegg’s light on?... She was bonny once, like a flower of the field (with reminiscent leer)”. Hamm also transmits his ‘knowledge’ to Clov by talking to him about the past, so all that Clov knows comes from Hamm’s vision of it. In this case, what the characters tells us about the past through their memories, is really significant because it is the only way we have to understand the mental and physical state in which they remain all along the play.

“Nagg: Do you remember?...when we crash in our tandem and lost our shranks”; “Hamm: Once I knew a madman.. I used to go and see him in the asylum. I’d take him by the hand and drag him to the window. Look! There! All that rising corn!...All he had seen was ashes.”  It also let us deep into their personalities because we actually find out what kinds of things are important to the characters when they show their memories.

Memories are different in the play Krapp’s Last Tape. Melancholic memories are rejected. Krapp listen to his voice recorded on tapes and feels stupid. “Krapp: Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to believe I was ever as bad as that…” So, looking back means foolish in here. This character might had the need of recording his impressions everyday in the past; but listening to himself now makes him realize about the mistakes he did. He also wonders what could have change if he had taken different decisions. “…Could have been happy with her, up there on the Baltic, and the pines, and the dunes. (Pause.) Could I? (Pause.) And she? (Pause.) Pah!...”  But as an old man he is, he tries to appear like a curt man, giving less importance to the facts that he can not change. However, he can’t put aside feelings that emerge when his recorded voice makes him remember.  “Be again on Croghan on a Sunday morning, in the haze, with the bitch, stop and listen to the bells. (Pause.) And so on. (Pause.) Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you. (Pause.) Lie down across her.

To sum up, in these three plays the characters despise their current lives by missing the past; and that is really important in the plays because memories are used by the author as clues for us to connect different ideas, so we can know about their lives without much information, imagining almost everything. Samuel Beckett is able to transmit faith, peace and shelter to some of his characters; or desperation, emptiness and impotence to some others with the same element: memories. It is very interesting to observe how bringing back memories can be for some people a happy fact, and for others a terrible thing.

Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Ivonne Pamela Landázuri
ilanbe@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press