Assignment 4: Krapps Last Tape

The most significant part in the play for me is the end.  In this part, Krapp has just finished listening to the tape he made when he was 39, it was made 30 years ago, and then starts a new tape. “Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for 30 years ago, hard to believe I was ever as bad as that. Thank God that’s all done anyway.” The reason I chose that part was because even though Krapp is now 69 and seems to detest the man he was when he made that tape recording, he appears to be the same. Over the tape he talks about his problem with bananas and alcohol (“Have just eaten I regret to say three bananas and with difficulty refrained from a forth. Fatal things for a man with my condition. Cut it out!’’) and how he should put an end to those habits but thirty years later he is still doing the same thing. “Krapp switches off [tape recorder], broods, looks at his watch, gets up, goes backstage into darkness. Ten seconds. Pop of a cork. Ten seconds. Second cork. Ten seconds. Third cork.”

Krapp is the only character in this play. He is very strange; he doesn’t seem to be mentally stable. I find his ability to stay the same over such a long period of time astonishing. He is a little different than he was at 39, but he seems to be essentially the same person. Samuel Beckett is the author of this play and he did a very good job writing this. Even though the 39 and 69 year old Krapps each talked about very different subjects on their tapes, during very different times in their life, the style in which they speak is the same in both. The Krapps’ both seem to lose their thoughts mid-sentence and are always pausing throughout their dialogues. It’s almost as if Krapp was frozen in time. In the play Krapp replays a certain part of the tape he made when he was 39 numerous times, giving the audience the feeling that even though he acted as though he is better now than he was then, he would give anything to be able to have that experience again. “We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently up and down, and from side to side. (Pause) Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be inhabitited. (Pause) Here I end-(Krapp switches off, winds tape back, Switches on again)”

The authors’ use of stage directions adds a lot more to the story. They allow the readers to see how spastic and weird Krapp is through his movements."He turns, advances to edge of stage, halts, strokes banana, peels it, drops skin at his feet, puts end of banana in his mouth and remains motionless, staring vacuously before him. Finally he bites off the end, turns aside and begins pacing to and fro at edge of stage, in the light, i.e. not more than four or five paces either way, meditatively eating banana. He treads on skin, slips, nearly falls, recovers himself, stoops and peers at skin and finally pushes it, still stooping, with his foot over the edge of the stage into pit." The stage directions allow the readers the ability to imagine the way the character's mannerisms and actions. They, along with the writing, help to thoroughly bring Krapp to life.