Krapp, Beckett, Krapp.

         My first thoughts after reading Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and watching John Hurt's stunning performance of the piece were not of Krapp, but rather of another Beckett character: Molloy. Molloy and Krapp were by no means “the exact same character” or any other silly universal Beckett argument. Instead, one appears to be a type of reflection of the other.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, to learn that Beckett had written Krapp's Last Tape as a response to hearing Molloy read by Patric Maggee; a segment of which we heard in class after reading Molloy ourselves.

         In this situation, the writer Beckett plays the elderly Krapp, listening to the foolish younger man–still Beckett–and reacting.

          Beckett and Krapp are much closer than any previous Beckett characters that we have read. Krapp is not wholly doomed in the same way that other characters have been. He has moments of happiness, however fleeting. (“Spooooooolllllllll.”) The same must be true for Beckett who, however damaged, cannot have been wholly lost to his bouts of depression.

          Somehow, with Krapp, Beckett finds a way to make us as readers even more suspicious about the possibility that the protagonist of the piece is actually Beckett himself struggling with the great and terrible questions of life.