{"id":437,"date":"2021-06-01T11:08:01","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T10:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/?p=437"},"modified":"2021-06-01T11:08:01","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T10:08:01","slug":"krapps-last-tape-and-other-short-plays-by-samuel-beckett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/2021\/06\/01\/krapps-last-tape-and-other-short-plays-by-samuel-beckett\/","title":{"rendered":"“Krapp\u2019s Last Tape and Other Short Plays” by Samuel Beckett"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019m a little hesitant about adding these short Becket plays to our list of dementia narratives. I doubt that Beckett intended them to be read as an insight into dementia, though his work leaves itself so intriguingly open for interpretation I can\u2019t imagine that he\u2019d be surprised by this particular approach. It\u2019s a long time since I last saw Krapp\u2019s Last Tape<\/em> performed but as I\u2019ve been reading through dementia novels and plays over the last few months it has frequently come to mind. It is essentially a short play about an old man remembering back over his life. He relistens to tapes he\u2019s recorded of himself at various younger stages and then amends and adapts these memories based upon how he now views the experiences he\u2019s been through. As a metaphor for how memory evolves, fractures and repeats within the mind of a person living with dementia, I think it\u2019s stunningly accurate. The old man\u2019s fleeting awareness of what he\u2019s doing, trawling through these tapes of his former life always reminds me of the Robert Frost poem, \u201cAn Old Man\u2019s Winter Night,\u201d and, in particular, the lines, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him\u2014at a loss.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beckett\u2019s characters with all their physical limitations and constraints seem incredibly familiar when considered in light of how ageing and indeed dementia can impact a person\u2019s physicality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having re-read Krapp\u2019s Last Tape<\/em>, I progressed on to other short plays by Beckett and couldn\u2019t help but see a possible dementia reading in many of these pieces. Memory and age are a frequent theme in Beckett\u2019s work, as is confusion around issues of identity, repetition and the passage of time. To be honest, though these texts don\u2019t claim to be dementia narratives, and I\u2019m not too sure whether they\u2019ve been considered as such before, Beckett\u2019s use of language comes the closest I\u2019ve seen in print text to conveying the sense of both internal confusion and linguistic disruption which occurs during the later stage of dementia. Take this section from That Time<\/em>, for example: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you started not knowing who you were from Adam trying how that would work for a change not knowing who you were from Adam no notion who it was saying what you were saying what you were saying whose skull you were clapped up in whose moan had you the way you were.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve read multiple verbatim transcripts of people living with dementia which sound incredibly similar to this and other sections of Beckett\u2019s plays where phrases are repeated, sentences fractured and narratives disarranged and devolved until they lose their sense. I\u2019m now intrigued. Am off to read some of Beckett\u2019s longer plays to see how they stand up as dementia texts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krapp\u2019s Last Tape and Other Plays was published by Faber and Faber in 2009. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a little hesitant about adding these short Becket plays to our list of dementia narratives. I doubt that Beckett intended them to be read as an insight into dementia, though his work leaves itself so intriguingly open for interpretation I can\u2019t imagine that he\u2019d be surprised by this particular approach. It\u2019s a long time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[49,9,28,14],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-irish","tag-man","tag-theatre","tag-woman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":438,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions\/438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}