Krapp’s Last Tape: Altering Of Time In Memories

The immortalization of an event in time is something achieved only if there is a written, filmed or painted record of it, the importance and magnitude of the work of art affecting the time it will be remembered. Krapp through the use of recordings manages to save his memories for a long time, accessing that personal memory bank created in the boxes from where he extracts a reel or memory to be played in his mind. The time the memory will last would only be determined by Krapp, depending on the significance of the vent in his life it could change the time, but the most essential thing is that he can access whenever he desires his memories. After I saw Krapp do this I decided to do the same thing, remembering that I was forced to do a diary of my trip to Amazonas in Spanish class, thinking it would never be important for anything in my life, but proving contrary when I read it. I read all the things I experienced while I was there, the extreme humidity, the sounds of the jungle and the day we ventured in the jungle. While I read the diary all these images passed through my mind enacting a movie of my trip while I read, finding out that these diary was really useful to remember things that I thought I will never forget, but the time erased them from my memory.

This was a great experience and time changed its speed. The time I took actually reading the diary was 20 minutes, but it seemed as if had passed an hour or more. The time passed very slowly and almost like stopping at certain points, making me feel again in the trip where it was difficult to determine the time, since in the jungle the amount of light visible is the same throughout the day which is very little. Krapp must have had a similar experience when listening to his tape regarding time. Even though there were parts where he forwarded and rewinded the tape, the passing of time also changed because his mind was drawn back into his past and made him experience the event again. At the beginning of the play the narrator says: "Krapp remains a moment motionless, heaves a great sigh, looks at his watch, fumbles in his pockets, takes out an evelope, puts it back, fumbles" (Beckett). There are two words in this maxim that show time which are the watch and moment, making time an important factor in this line. This part was in the beginning of the play which suggests the reader that the time will be affected throughout the play, changing from fast to slow. These happens when Krapp forwards the tape and rewinds it, altering the natural time passage of his memory, something done on purpose to reach the desired part but losing the real meaning of a memory which is to re-live the experience.