Krapp’s Last Tape (1958)
by Samuel Beckett
(Summary)
Summary of Krapp’s Last Tape (1958)
Krapp’s Last Tape is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett
that explores memory, time, regret, and the fragmentation of the self. The
entire play centers on a single character, Krapp, an aging man who spends his
birthday listening to audio recordings he made of himself in earlier years.
Through this ritual, Beckett dramatizes the painful confrontation between past
hopes and present emptiness.
The play opens with Krapp alone on stage in a dimly lit
room. He is sixty-nine years old, shabby, awkward, and mechanical in his
movements. Before engaging with the tape recorder, Krapp performs a series of
repetitive actions: he checks drawers, eats bananas, slips on the peel, and
handles objects with exaggerated care. These actions establish his isolation,
his physical decline, and the ritualistic nature of his life. The bananas,
which recur throughout the play, subtly suggest decay, habit, and even crude
humor masking despair.
Krapp prepares to listen to a tape recorded thirty
years earlier, when he was thirty-nine. Before playing it, he consults his
ledger, a notebook in which he catalogues his recordings. This ledger reduces
his life to cold, factual summaries, suggesting how memory has become
mechanical rather than emotional. When he finally plays the tape, the audience
hears the confident, articulate voice of the younger Krapp, sharply contrasting
with the broken old man on stage.
The recorded Krapp speaks of his ambitions, his belief
in artistic success, and his determination to abandon emotional attachments in
favor of intellectual achievement. He mocks an even younger version of himself,
revealing a pattern of self-contempt that repeats across time. The older Krapp
reacts to this voice with bitterness, sarcasm, and occasional anger. He pauses
the tape frequently to comment, rewind, or fast-forward, demonstrating his
inability to fully endure his past self.
One of the most significant moments on the tape is the
memory of a romantic encounter by a lake with a woman he once loved deeply. The
younger Krapp describes a tender moment in a boat, with the woman resting
against him in silence. This scene stands out as the play’s emotional core,
representing a moment of genuine human connection. Yet the older Krapp, instead
of lingering on its emotional depth, chooses to replay the passage repeatedly
while remaining emotionally detached. His fixation reveals regret and loss,
even as he refuses to openly acknowledge them.
As the tape continues, the younger Krapp speaks proudly
of having achieved a crucial “vision” or insight that supposedly justified his
sacrifices. Ironically, the older Krapp finds this idea meaningless. His life
has not produced the greatness he once anticipated. The ambition that led him
to reject love has resulted in loneliness, sterility, and routine.
After listening, Krapp decides to make a new recording.
His present-day voice is weaker, harsher, and more fragmented. In this final
tape, he dismisses the ideals of his younger self and admits that his life has
been a failure. He speaks of drinking, solitude, and the loss of desire. Yet
even now, he repeats the same patterns of judgment and denial that
characterized earlier versions of himself. The “last tape” is not a resolution
but another entry in an endless cycle.
In the closing moments of the play, Krapp sits motionless
as the tape recorder continues to run. The light fades while he remains frozen,
listening to silence or to fragments of memory. The ending underscores the
play’s bleak vision: identity is unstable, memory is unreliable, and time does
not bring wisdom or reconciliation—only repetition and decay.
Through its minimalist structure and intense focus on a
single character, Krapp’s Last Tape presents a haunting meditation on the
failure of language, the erosion of self, and the tragic distance between who
we were and who we become.
 by Samuel Beckett (Summary)){kind=link}
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