Documented memory as a medium of individual and collective resistance in Morrison’s A Mercy and Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape

Is the way that I remember the world around me just as important as what I remember? Nietzsche might spin in his grave at the question, but physical forms of recollection rarely bring up reflection on how they are taken down, more what we are trying to remember. But oftentimes in conversation, how we speak dictates how we feel and even changes what we remember, so as we engage in conversation with literary works such as the following by Toni Morrison and Samuel Beckett, their form does the same. Towards the end of Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, the narrator describes her own process of recording as a sort of ‘letter’ written on the literal floors and walls of a home. Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape describes a present Krapp listening to a tape made by a past Krapp, and his intense emotional reactions to its contents. In both, the narrative beauty of story-form is hinted at. Morrison’s narrative develops in conversation with the outside world, while Beckett implies a more circular, internal narrative. In this way, Morrison engages personal memory and Beckett collective memory, allowing them to rebel against erasure and lack of meaning. While Beckett’s remembrance exemplifies a personal form of rebellion against meaninglessness, Morrison goes further and involves her audience, allowing them to engage in conversation with the work and encouraging them to continue resisting lack of meaning by taking up the story-telling torch.

In his article, “Nietzsche on Truth, Illusion, and Redemption,” R. Lanier Anderson claims that stories pin events together, lending them additional significance according to their place in the story. Anderson bases this idea on the eternal recurrence problem proposed by Nietzsche: a thought experiment in which you are asked, ‘what if you had to live the exact same life you have lived over again and again for eternity?’ and respond either with happiness or horror based on your satisfaction with the life you currently live (Anderson 197). Thankfully, Anderson’s analysis shows a possible solution to the horribleness of this situation by proposing a way to redeem a sequence of unpleasant events by pinning them together with something aesthetically pleasing: a story. This redemption of past events is based on their formal significance – they are lent greater meaning not based on whether the events themselves are good or bad, but how they relate chronologically and aesthetically to other events. He says that formal significance “redeems it [an individual event] by changing its import in my life. If I can tell my life story in such a way that I will the whole, then I can likewise affirm each event within it, in virtue of its essential contribution to the meaning of the whole story” (Anderson 200). Stories, in this way, allow us to produce something that is greater than merely the sum of its parts. They are somehow abstracted from and deeply interwoven into a string of events in such a way that the events themselves gain greater significance through their relation to one another. I would argue that this is true to an extent, but that further, pinning these events together is an act of resistance; in rejecting events’ accepted value, you’re not just redeeming them, you’re rejecting their lack of meaning by asserting meaning upon them. But there isn’t only one type of form, and a question that Anderson leaves open is how forms differ and if some are greater than others.

Beckett’s medium of auditory playback allows for a personal preservation of memory through circularity and self-identifying elements. Krapp’s Last Tape generates a literal conversation between past and future Krapp. It freezes multiple forms of individual recognition (sound, words, tone) that render it filled with emotion and a signature of who Krapp was (which sometimes pleases, sometimes pains him as he plays it back). While the tape could be played to anyone, in the play it is played by Krapp himself, and was clearly also intended to be listened to by him. Its circular sort of narrative appears as follows: “…unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with the light of the understanding and the fire—[KRAPP curses louder, switches off, winds tape forward, switches on again]—my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving” (Krapp 60). The whole piece focuses on a sort of internal and conflicted conversation between past and present, alternating between the two. Evidently bringing out a series of intense emotions causing Krapp to try to skip certain sections, the reader is left bewildered – why are we switching forward? What does Krapp wish to not relive? The personal nature of the tape is evident due to this imbalance of knowledge between reader and Krapp himself. However, since the didascalie indicates a catalyzing of emotions within Krapp himself, the tape clearly has great effect, and it follows that the auditory recording of Krapp’s previous thoughts has some ability to preserve not only Krapp’s previous thoughts, but his emotions, retrievable only by him (and the reader/audience on a much more removed level, only upon understanding and empathizing with his emotion). The reader is a literal voyeur of his interaction with his former self, and is fundamentally separated from having the same level of experience of Krapp’s former self as he can.

Morrison’s A Mercy, by contrast, engages more ambiguous language that allows the reader to slip into the narrative in a way that Krapp doesn’t, suggesting more of a collective memory. Additionally, her use of second person forms a direct invitation to the audience, allowing the recording of past to be a shared experience – a conversation with the reader, rather than with the narrator herself. In a very intimate and convention-breaking revelation toward the end of the book, the narrator Florens says:

“These words cover the floor. From now you will stand to hear me. The walls make trouble because lamplight is too small to see by…. My arms ache but I have need to tell you this. I cannot tell it to anyone but you. I am near the door and at the closing now. What will I do with my nights when the telling stops? Dreaming will not come again. Sudden I am remembering.” (Morrison 160).

Morrison uses emotional language to engage the reader rather than isolating them by making the emotions and physical space relatable. The use of ‘you’ and positioning of ‘you’ in the same room as the narrator by describing the scene in such detail and telling the reader to stand allows a level of communion over the scene. The environment of a house provides a familiar space, and further an ambiguous or vague house that allows the reader to imagine their own house and thus come closer. In this passage, though you have read the work as Florens’ story, suddenly there is ambiguity as to whose emotions and memories are being written down as the passage transitions from second to first person – is this my own house? Was I dreaming? Am I the one remembering? In this way, Morrison evokes a sort of shared memory that invites the reader to take part in Florens experience and write their own surroundings and emotions into her framework.

Given its ability to preserve memory on a personal scale, Beckett’s work serves as a form of resistance against the ability of bad events to make life meaningless. Krapp’s Last Tape seems to send a sort of ‘I’ll take what I can get’ message. Throughout the play, Krapp is making decisions, and they don’t end up working out so well. At the age of thirty nine, he abandons love in favor of devoting his life to art, and ends up with “Seventeen copies sold, of which eleven at trade price to free circulating libraries beyond the seas” (Krapp 62). His choices clearly didn’t yield the most gratifying turn of events. But it is precisely the loss of love (once it happened, but never again) that seems to have Krapp so enthralled by his own tape. It is its very lastness – as indicated by the title of the piece – that makes it so intriguing. This indicates, as Anderson has been shown to support, that to some extent even horrible moments caused by bad decisions can be in some sense redeemable; that aesthetically, at least, individual moments gain more force based on their place in a story. Further, it demonstrates the possibility of resistance through the act of recording memories. For Krapp, this is purely a personal resistance – he will not give up on his life or the fact that it has meaning because he can at least say that it has tragic beauty. This allows him to live with himself and not feel horrible for the risks he took – in this sense, they were worth it because they caused memorable moments that yielded a richer narrative. This allows Beckett to find peace without having to do more because even if he could change the past, he shouldn’t. The closing scene goes: “[…The tape runs on in silence.]” showing a lingering sense of passivity (Beckett 63).

On the other end of the spectrum, Morrison take a passionately active role in making her the ending of her story meaningful by bringing the reader into it so it’s not an ending at all, but the start of a new conversation. Of course, in the natural narrative arc of the book, there is still a suggestion of lastness, but there is a greater suggestion of continuance. Toward the end, the narrator, Florens, says, “You won’t read my telling. You read the world but not the letters of talk. You don’t know how to. Maybe one day you will learn” (Morrison 160). The idea of ‘reading the world’ suggests a bigger picture than merely the novel, and draws the reader into the text as a unique experience as part of a greater telling. In this sense, it’s not so much the placement of this event in the narrative she has written, the narrative in the story of the larger scope of the world. Further, Florens addresses the reader directly and conflates them with her mother: “See? You are correct. A minha mãe too” and “That all this time I cannot know what my mother is telling me…. Mãe, you can have pleasure now because the soles of my feet are hard as cypress” (Morrison 161). The use of multiple pronouns (I, you, and her) yields such ambiguity to this last part that it is almost difficult to follow, but the overlapping participants could be most easily separated as the reader, Florens, and Florens’ mother. However, the overlap of ‘you’ and ‘a minha mãe’ almost makes the reader feel like Florens is addressing them as her mother. This offers a strange kind of circularity, with not only the emotional but physical connection Florens bears to her mother through the process of birth. Although this seems odd, since one would think that the reader is almost born out of Florens’ experiences, this reversal of roles allows Morrison to reject the end of a cycle typically imposed by the end of a book. Instead of the work ending with the reader, she conflates herself to the reader, or the reader to an author who must now go out with the addition of Florens’ recorded memories to write their own stories. This conflation of identities indicates a more universal, collective authorial role that involves the reader as part of the writing themselves.

As a performative and personal piece, Krapp’s tapes give an example of form for living a different (not necessarily better) life. Beckett’s play is very specifically focused – through the auditory nature of the tapes and the visual of Krapp, multiple senses are captured in understanding his experience; in addition, his ‘conversation’ is between his past and present self. Thus, the two contenders for living a better life according to Anderson’s principles are 1) past self, who can make his choices without worrying about the future and 2) present self, who can accept the bad decisions of the past because they yielded a richer life. I would argue this doesn’t seem to be the entirely the case for Krapp, who seems to manipulate the narrative of his story a lot someone who thinks that all his decisions are beautiful when seen in the framework of a story: “[Long pause. He suddenly bends over machine, switches off, wrenches off tape, throws it away, puts on the other, winds it forward to the passage he wants, switches on, listens staring front.]” (Beckett 63). He bounces around to focus on the loss of his love, but if the tragic beauty of that moment rested on its spot in the narrative, then why would he have to skip around so much? In this sense, dwelling on the minute specifics of the aesthetic beauty of past trauma doesn’t seem like the healthiest way to go about living a good life. However, it doesn’t have to be – perhaps Beckett is showing a positive example in living life to the fullest and not doubting our choices, but a negative example of the reflection process, or perhaps he wants to particularly emphasize the effect of a specific tragic moment. Regardless, Beckett’s work gives a model-by-example for living a better life, although it is questionable as to whether present Krapp’s obsession with the past is something that would be a good argument for aesthetic form as redeeming bad events.

In my opinion, Morrison yields a much more positive way of living a better life by actively giving the reader a role (beyond spectator) as well as the tools to live better. As discussed, the ‘letter’ on the walls and floors is universally applicable through its vagueness and allows the reader to easily slip in and become an author by role-playing. She resists the common dynamic of story-teller and audience, instead engaging the reader in conversation and giving them a role in the story – her mother, the author, the blacksmith, themselves – all are allowed in the ambiguity of the language. Her ‘letter’ engages the reader intimately: “I cannot stop them wanting to tear you open the way you tear me,” and “My arms ache but I have need to tell you this. I cannot tell it to anyone but you” (Morrison 160). Not only does Florens seem to identify with the reader, she suggests the reader will feel her emotions, her experiences, and has to hear her story. Finally, she says, “If you never read this, no one will” (Morrison 161). There is a sense of immediacy, urgency, and of the unique position of the reader. Morrison rejects the idea that the message stops in the words that she is recording, but that they are part of a greater narrative that continues with the person reading it. Further, she explicitly tells the reader how and where she wrote her story down (on her house) and the reason for her doing so (to stop them from doing the same thing you ‘you’ – the reader). All this, in addition to the self-identification at the end, “I am become wilderness but I am also Florens,” gives the reader a template of narrative and of self-telling (Morrison 161). In this way, Morrison’s work provides not only aesthetic satisfaction for the narrator in completing her journey, but for the world as a whole for completing a work that is, in and of itself, an event in a greater narrative of storytelling that the reader is encouraged to continue. 

Anderson’s expression of narrative yielding aesthetic redemption is manifested in Krapp on a purely personal level, and Morrison on a larger scale; in both, there is an element of resistance that allows the reader/audience to transcend the past through present conversations, both internally and externally directed. Krapp poses a more traditional approach that has been fairly widespread since Ancient Greek theatre: that of leading by example. However, he’s unique in his verifiably imperfect and nostalgic life. As Camus with his Sisyphus, Anderson would have Krapp’s readers/views imagine him happy in his drudgery by reflecting on its aesthetic, tragic brilliance. This absurdist streak is similarly met by Morrison, who rejects the ending to the story altogether and creates meaning in past events by making them present for a reader and encouraging the reader to continue the cycle. Critically distinct from Camus is the abstraction from the self in the form of literary art; while Sisyphus is ever tied to the physical act of revolt (pushing), here the one who records a memory will revolt through psychologically and artistically molding the past into something beautiful. So perhaps Anderson is right that narrative arc gives events added significance, but it would seem the act of resistance in generating meaning by imposing symmetry and beauty upon it requires not merely active motion, but motion through which we actively aspire to render our past beautiful.

Works Cited

Anderson, R. Lanier. “Nietzsche on Truth, Illusion, and Redemption.” European Journal of Philosophy 13.2 (2005): 185-225. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, UK.

Beckett, Samuel. Krapp’s Last Tape. Grove Press, 1984.

Morrison, Toni. A Mercy. Knopf, 2008.