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Krapp's Last Tape: Imagery In Color

Krapp's Last Tape: Imagery in Color


During the 20th century, there was an evident disillusion and
disintegration in religious views and human nature due to the horrific and
appalling events and improvements in technology of this time, such as the
Holocaust and the creation of the atom bomb. This has left people with little,
if any, faith in powers above or in their own kind, leaving them to linger in
feelings of despair and that life is an absurd joke. From these times grew the
Theater of Absurd. Here they attempted to depict the very illogical and
ridiculous life they were living. In comparison to traditional characteristics
of earlier plays, the plots are seemingly deficient, if not sparse with little
resolution. Yet despite this, these plays make very bold and philosophical
statements about life in the 20th century. The playwrights indiscreetly utilize
metaphoric and symbolic details to support their message. In "Krapp's Last
Tape," Samuel Beckett exploits such techniques in expressing his own bleak and
pessimistic view of the world.
In his middle years of his life, Krapp retained this rigid and anal
retentive nature. He kept these tapes in which he would constantly reevaluate
his own life and try to always improve it, using these tapes as "help before
embarking on a new retrospect" (1629). He had also stored these various tapes
organized in boxes with their location written in a ledger. Yet in his latter
years, there is an apparent decay of this regimental attitude. His very
appearance is an indication of this decline. He is described as wearing "Rusty
black narrow trousers to short for him. Rusty black sleeveless waistcoat.
Surprising pair of dirty white boots. Disordered gray hair. Unshaven. Very
near-sighted (but unspectacled)," which is not the description of an anal
retentive person (1627). Also despite the ledger and the boxes, he still cannot
find the tapes which evidently have obviously become disorganized over time.
And in his...