Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape captures the past and present of the only character, Krapp, who is listening to a recording made thirty years earlier. The play was required us to imagine most of the stories that might have happened with Krapp and it must have been a unique experience for audiences who actually went to see the play. Unlike other plays, Krapp's Last Tape did not have a strong plotline, rather had flashbacks of events that were included within text. It was somewhat confusing to understand the play and the purpose of it on a broader scale. I think that Samuel Beckett wrote the play to emphasize the importance of small events in our lives and how each decision that we make have a huge impact on our future. As I was reading the play, I was thinking that anyone can be in Krapp's position of looking back at the past and regretting about the things that we have done wrong. As we grow older, our perspective of things change and we look back thinking if we made a better choice how different our lives would be. Krapp seems to be a character that lives a solitary life while reminiscing a lot about his old years.  The younger Krapp’s hope of sacrificing his life to become a successful writer has not been realized. The older Krapp’s attention is visibly occupied in trying to recapture an experience, heard from the taped voice, of lovemaking in a punt on a lake. This incident of Krapp attempting to savor his past experiences contrasts severely with his decision to remain alone to pursue his work. I think someone like Krapp probably tries to keep a distance from the attachments of relationship as he lets the situation taking control of his life. This can be exemplified when he was talking about his mother’s death and how was playing with the black ball gave the ball away to the dog even though he could keep it. The lines that specifically alludes to the submissive nature of Krapp are, “A small, old, black, hard, solid rubber ball……I might have kept it…But I gave it to the dog.”