Samuel Beckett
Krapp’s last tape
London, 1958
Characters:
Krapp: Krapp is an old man, grey-haired and dishevelled. Has a vigorous voice and because of his age has some problems for walking and hearing. He lives alone and he is a grumpy man. Krapp has recorded his voice year after year with a summary of his impressions; so he has lots of tapes. When he listens to them, he feels less alone but continues despising his ideas of years ago. He seems to like eating bananas and to feel safer in darkness.
His voice when he was thirty is like a different character, from the time he was beginning to turn the lonely person he is now. The young Krapp use to have a little more faith in love and in happiness; anyway, Krapp has been a self-centred person since his childhood and that made him a serious young man, and a lonely old man.
Plot:
Krapp goes to his den looking for his old tapes. He listens to one of them which he recorded when he was thirty nine, meanwhile he eats a banana. His voice talks pessimistically about a tape he had just listened to and all the good purposes he had, like drinking less or improving his love-life, when he was younger. His recorded voice also talks about that year of his life; the year in which his mother died, remembering the dog’s rubber ball he held in his hand, and the woman who remained next to him under the sun and the precious moment he spent resting over her breast. Krapp, by those years was beginning to feel that the best days of his life had gone. And now, Krapp despise the man on the tape because he consider a lost of energy thinking about that woman who betrayed him years ago.
Space:
Krapp is probably in his studio, which Samuel Beckett calls “Krapp’s den”. It has a desk, a chair and lots of old tapes. The light is minimal and no more decoration is mentioned. His den could be a part of his own house and it’s difficult to know where in the world is he; but actually, it is irrelevant
Time:
“A late evening in the future”. The future is such and uncertain place…it doesn’t let us know which his present is.
The action takes place continuously, but Krapp’s reflections makes him pause his recorded voice constantly, and also he pauses while he is recording now. Listening to his voice brings him lots of memories as flash-backs.
Literary and stylistic sources:
Beckett’s indications are everything we have to understand what happens with Krapp. This is a play full of pauses and silent.
Krapp is an old man, probably a kind of writer or journalist, so his language is far from vulgar. Sometimes he even let the poetry run from his lips to be recorded.
Personal point of view:
Remembering the past could be sometimes an excellent way to smile; but in other occasions could be a masochistic exercise. And for Krapp, listening to his memories narrated by himself brings him the bad memories of what happened in his past.
Everything that happened to him made him a lonely, egoist and bored man.
Now there’s no way back to change the decisions he made; now everything he has are the consequences. There’s no point in regretting what he did because he can’t do anything about it. But having all those recorded tapes gives him the chance to understand in which exact moment we lost his faith in life and love.
“Tape: Thirty-nine today, sound as a bell, apart from my old weakness, and intellectually I have knew every reason to suspect at the . . . (hesitates) . . . crest of the wave--or thereabouts.”
Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Ivonne Pamela Landázuri
ilanbe@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia Press