Rick Cluchey

Rick Cluchey startled me with his answer to my question about the setting of “Krapp’s Last Tape”. I ask why the play was set in the future, and his response was deflating. He explained that home recording was highly unused at the time and this sort of home recording device would only have been possible in the future. I think that would probably been Beckett’s answer as well. So often we think our philosophical reasons for the placement of words in texts must be absolute. Then, someone gives an obvious down-to-earth explanation. Although I think Beckett would have given the same answer I doubt that it would be the only answer. Whether he had a greater philosophical reason to place those directions (seemingly pointless directions at that) in the play, or he simply saw it as the only way to render home recording, he must have known the implications of their placement. I doubt that he knew completely why he placed the play in the future, if he did know he probably would have told us, just as he would have told us who Godot was.

Herb Blau

Herbert Blau moved to the side of the podium leaving one hand rested on top for support his eyes turning deep and serious as if his next statement came from some well within him. “We remember most what we’d rather forget,” he said. This statement was the answer to a question I had asked him about Beckett’s reference to throughout his work. Why had Beckett constantly brought up memory in so much of his work, especially in “Krapp’s Last Tape”? Blau who is now working on his autobiography is confronted with his own memories, as Krapp was confronted, as we are all confronted. We cannot rid our minds of memory, and especially those memories which, for one reason or another, we want to forget. Our perception of the world around us is shaped by those inescapable memories. No matter how hard one may try to simply experience his existence he is inevitably forced to juxtapose present experience with past memories. We must live through those memories, we cannot simply experience.

Krapp's Last Tape

Beckett has set his play “Krapp’s Last Tape” in “A late evening in the future.” Also, the play is a reliving of old memories. The result is a depiction which takes place entirely out of the present. The lighting is also important in differentiating between the present and the future during the play because only the “table and immediately adjacent area” are in the light, while everything else is “in darkness”. The result of the lighting is that only memory is replayed and recorded in the light, only memory can be seen or perceived. The present occurs in the dark and cannot be seen. For example, Krapp get’s up to go have a drink or three offstage and in the dark. But the lines of the play which are only recollections of recollection are all in the light. The implications are that only in memory can one perceive. We cannot think or experience the present, we simply remember an experience. What we experience in “the present” must be first conceptualized in the mind and it is a memory of this conceptualization which we actually experience. Also, one must take present experience and judge its relationship to previous memories in order to conceptualize meaning from present experiences. Therefore, the play entirely about memory is placed in the future, because one may remember the past or ponder the future, but it is highly unlikely that he can experience the present.

Texs for Nothing

Beckett questions the relativity of time in “Texts for Nothing” by juxtaposing the words “here” and “there”. He writes, “there never much varied, only the here would sometimes seem to vary.” Here is the present which changes constantly. There is the past which does not change, because the past has no place to change. One line which displays the relation of time to the speaker’s self is when he says, “I had only been here, now I’m here still, soon I won’t be here yet.” Again the word here is the present and the narrator is trapped in the present. Until the final clause when he says, “soon I won’t be here yet.” Is there some lag in memory which pulls the narrator from the present?

The voices of “Texts for Nothing” are not merely two, but several. It is certain the entity of the narrator has multiple voices. This is seen when he says, “Ah yes, we seem to be more than one.” However, the use of “they” to refer to the other voices, by the “I” shows that this is not just a conversation including only the self and the body, but rather multiple selves trapped inside a body.

Eh Joe

The camera moves in “Eh Joe” creeps the viewer closer to the face of Joe. This magnifies every move, twitch, and blink of the character. The camera seems to try to get inside Joe’s head probing his thoughts his rebuttals to the condescending voice. However, the only achievement of these movements is the magnification of expression. Joe makes no reply to the voice, he has no defense. He shows only his intentness upon the voice. Joe’s thoughts and memory have become a plague to him at the present, and it is his own thought, his own memory of that voice, of his past life with which he cannot converse and from which he cannot escape. The voice magnifies the self just as the camera magnifies the exterior expression. Both create a terrifying look at the person of Joe, for the viewer as well as for Joes himself.

Film

Esse est percipi
The expression of the couple, the flower woman, and O shows the “agony of perceivedness.” The film depicts this agony throughout by the mere thought of O trying to escape his own perception of himself. This is obviously impossible because “the self” (E) is the same entity as O. Self perception is a prerequisite to being an existential being. Humans separate themselves from the world around them by noting the change in perception as the world moves around them, which places them in space and time, and it is because of this realization of separateness that O can have a concept of E. Why would O want to escape E in the first place? The realization that one exists also leads to the fear of one not existing anymore. However, because O realizes that he exists E therefore exists and if O can get rid of E (self perception) he can also get rid of the realization that he has the potential to cease existing.

End Game

My first impulse is to laugh, until the end. Though the text does not say Hamm dies it does imply that's what is going on. It is, to me, a reflection of an all to serious fact: We all die. The play is built around this final ending. And this ending, this death takes place with Hamm being alone. Leading up to his death he knows that ultimately he will cease to be conscious, and it scares him. He asks for medication, for sight, for company to ease his passing, but nothing will ease death. Hamm shows this realization that death is the only result of life when he, says "All he knows is hunger, and cold, and death to crown it all."
Hamm also tells Clov how he will feel when death and time come knocking on his door. He tells him that he will go blind, will be tired, hungry, and then eventually, after the process has been drawn out to be almost unbearable, he will die too, just like Hamm. Infinite emptiness is what awaits in the afterlife, according to Hamm. The total lack of meaning in Hamm's afterlife is the true terror. He may exist, in some spiritual or mental form, maybe. But if he does it will be as a tiny grit in the bigger picture of the next world. Thus, rendering him meaningless and without a purpose or value.
This however is not so different from life now. After Hamm asks, "We're not beginning to...to... mean something?" Clov, finding this funny, says, "Mean something! You and I, mean something! Ah that's a good one!" As Clov sees it he already is meaningless in life, why should death have to have meaning?

The End

This story begins as many of Beckett's short stories, with the speaker being "thrown out". The End seems to be a culmination of all the stories before beginning with First Love. Beckett revisits many themes from the previous stories as well. The speaker is being pushed out of his safe zone constantly. This relays a universal human fear of a world out of the control of the self. The vast majority of human beings deal with this expulsion by identifying with some immortal concept, be it God, lover, nation, etc. Here the normal human being is then found lost in the vastness of the association of the self with an idea too big for itself. The individual wants to reflexively be special, which contradicts the first association. Beckett's character seems to have let go of any desire to be part of the immortal concept. He does not want to be part of society, has no desire for love, and has no trust in a God-like figure. Neither, does he try to be special, to be somebody. He simply exists, almost instinctually. His relationship to his father sums up the speaker's concept of his relationship to the world. "I would have liked him [the father] to draw me close with a gesture of protective love, but his mind was on other things." He seems to feel as though the immortal figures in his life do not really care about him, and therefore he does not even care about himself, or even the self. He is simply physical. He says he has no "courage to end or the strength to go on." He needs the strength of a false immortality which he cannot attract, or he needs the courage to make him stand apart from mortality, which he does not possess. Instead, he simply allows life to happen with constant sensory input, until death happens without fear naturally.

The Calmative

"It is not my wish to labour these antinomies, for we are needless to say in a skull, but I have no choice but to add the following few remarks. All the mortals I saw were alone and as if sunk in themselves."

In The Calmative Beckett indirectly questions the ability of thought to be outside of the real physical self. Humans are "sunk in themselves" leaving each of us "alone". It seems this lonliness is a result of each of us only being able to communicate what is going on in our skulls incompletely. Though the main character in the story is telling this story from the grave (figuratively). Therefore, he is purely thought without a body. In his story he has a body, but he is telling the story without any indication to the reader that he is an actual physical form as the story teller. This is how his pure thoughts can be alluded to throughout the story.
It is because these interactions with the living in his story are experiencing pure thought that the great majority are scared or do not notice at all. If we really knew what was happening inside a persons skull it would be scary, some of us however pay no attention to the thoughts of others anyway and wouldn't notice the difference.

"Then atlast, before, I fell, first to my knees, as cattle do, then on my face, I was in a throng. I didn't lose consciousness, when I lose consciousness it will not be able to recover. They paid no heed to me, though careful not to walk no me, a courtesy that must have touched me, it was what I had come out for."

In the above passage Beckett makes two major points. Firstly, after all thought is gone, there's no getting it back. Secondly, though people are courteous they ignore him. This demonstrates the mental disconnectedness of individuals, and the perfect contintment of that lack of true interaction between most humans.

"All I say cancels out, I'll have said nothing."

Why then does he tell the story?In order to communicate fully with the reader. Beckett is trying to allow the reader to experience the thought of the main character.

The Expelled

Beckett has accommodated the mess of thought in The Expelled. Though the narrator may be pathological he demonstrates characteristics of average human thought. He is sporadic in his memory, and his thought is loosely connected to what is happening around him.

A major congruency throughout the story is memory. Beckett indirectly questions the importance of remembering, as well as what it is important to remember. It seems that the narrator has no need for the exact replication of certain events. For example, the steps he has counted a thousand times are only "not many". He says, "The figure has gone from my mind." The figure of the memory seems not to be important in this case. "The important thing to remember is that there were not many, and that I have remembered." The story proceeds from this point to be sometimes precise in its account, while at other times he can't remember a thing. This seems to be directly inverted of his recent priority of memory. It is. The story is details, details, details. Which is why he ends the story telling the reader, "I don't know why I told you this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I'll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are." The narrator assumes that the main theme of any story he tells will be the same and only the unimportant details will change.
Unimportant details seem to comprise the entire story. This is the answer to the question of memory for Beckett. Any story no matter what it is conveys these unimportant details they are "neither the cradle nor the grave of anything whatever". The narrator proceeds to follow the sun to death, just as all memory, all stories, all thought arrives at the death bed. The important thing is living, existing in the moment. "Memories are killing."

Waiting for Godot

Estragon: I tell you I wasn't doing anything.
Vladimir: Perhaps you weren't. But it's the way of doing it that counts, the way of doing it,
if you want to go on living.

Throughout the entire play they are doing "nothing", at least they are not doing anything productive. Though they are doing "nothing" they are still thinking. Thought and reason are major ideas that Beckett questions in Waiting for Godot. Even though estragon was wasn't doing anything, the way he should be going about it still requires thought and reason.
However, thinking is what seems to keep them existing or "living" as Vladimir puts it. They can't really do nothing, they are trapped by thought. They're bored, they are waiting...in this case for Godot. Estragon comes to this realization saying, "All my lousy life I've crawled about in this mud!" He his stuck in his own thoughts. Estragon depicts the result of thinking when he says, "We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?" I believe this is a major line because Beckett is questioning thought and existence of the human intellect. Thought it seems only gives the intellect the impression of existing.

Finally, on page 91 Vladimir depicts the horrid truth of thought and reason. He says, "All I know is that the hours are long under these conditions, and constrain us to beguile them with proceedings which - how shall I say - which may at first sight seem reasonable, until they become a habit. You may say it is to prevent our reason from foundering. No doubt. But has it not long been straying in the night without end of the abyssal depths? That's what I sometimes wonder. You follow my reasoning?" Their proceedings, their thoughts seem reasonable, but they aren't. Then, in true comic fashion he asks if Estragon has followed yet more of his useless reasoning. The portrayal here is the fact that one cannot try not to think without pondering how to accomplish such means. Thus, it defeats his purpose. In thinking that one should shot thinking one is still trapped in the act of reason and thought.

Beckett's answer to freedom from thought, especially meaningless thought, is there is no escape. Wait to die, then maybe, maybe you can stop, but probably not.

First Love

"What mattered to me ... was supineness in the mind, the dulling of the self and of that residue of execrable frippery known as the non-self and even the world, for short."

Supineness of the mind. What a great picture of the mind idle, not thinking. Beckett wants to stop, as much as he can, thinking. Not only to dull his concept of the self, but even what is left over after the self has passed. He wants to lose his grip on the concept of the world.

Directly after this quote Beckett brings the story back to the physical. "But man is still today, at the age of twenty-five, at the mercy of an erection." Even in this age of reason mankind is inseparable from his physical form. The body must eat, must breath, must have erections, and so on. It is unstoppable, and this seems almost to undercut his prior point of dulling the self and the world.

He recounts or imagines an encounter in which he says, "It is painful to be no longer oneself, even more if possible than when one is." This is because if you know who you are it is much easier to know who you don't want to be.

The situation is cyclical. For, as he strives lazily to dull his sense of himself and the world, he puts himself in an even worse state of mind, because he doesn't know who not to be. This cyclical reasoning always always always throughout the story brings us back to the physical and the object of the story. Just as the narrator the image of his first love is brought back to that bench at evening.

Beckett works throughout the story to accommodate the mess of the physical and to prevent the organiztion of the metaphysical - love.