Krapp’s Central Metaphor
The entire “plot” such as it is of Beckett’s short play Krapp’s Last Tape essentially boils down to a single memory. A moment of epiphany spurred by the recollection brought on by the young Krapp making what was not his last tape:
“What I suddenly saw then was this, that the belief I had been going on all my life, namely--(Krapp switches off impatiently, winds tape forward, switches on again)--great granite rocks the foam flying up in the light of the lighthouse and the wind-gauge spinning like a propellor, clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality--(Krapp curses, switches off, winds tape forward, switches on again)--unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with the light of the understanding and the fire”
Moonbeams
The play Not I is another one-person monologue. And it is even more bizarre than Krapp’s ongoing argument with himself. Just one character—lips really—rattling off a disconnected story in bits and pieces constructed of imagery and metaphor. One particular type of metaphorical image is recurring:
“and all the time this ray or beam . . . like moonbeam . . . but probably not”
“starting to move around . . . like moonbeam but not”
“dull roar like falls . . . in the skull . . . and the beam”
The Plot Such as it Is
In case one wonders: plot is not exactly at the top of Beckett’s list of things to worry about while crafting a play. This is why the entire turning point of the “plot” of the play titled simply Play can be summed up in one metaphor about hiring a detective to figure out if a husband is a cheater: “Though I had him dogged for months by a first-rate man, no shadow of proof was forthcoming.”
Endgame
Scholarly analysis has determined that if Endgame is about nothing else, it is about process. Processing perception and processing meaning and processing understanding. It should come as little surprise, then, that the opening lines of the drama describe process in metaphorical terms:
“Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. (Pause.) Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap.”
Godot
The most famous metaphor in the canon of Samuel Beckett is also one of the most famous metaphors of twentieth-century drama. The two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, spend the entirety of the play so titled “waiting for Godot.” Who or what Godot is never does get literally explained. Godot exists purely within the form of metaphor. Some suggest it is God for whom all humans waiting in one way or another. Other proffer the concept that Godot is a metaphor for anything which one waits for, never fully understanding and which never does arrive.
