In the short drama, "Tape," by Jose Rivera, the plot
reflects the play's major elements. The major elements of the play are: the sequence of
events; the setting, characters and conflict; foreshadowing; flashback; and, the play's
climax and resolution. All of these elements drive the short drama's
plot.
This one-act play is set in a place the audience
might assume to be purgatory. There are two characters: the Person (who has died) and
the Attendant (who will see to the "care" of the Person). The conflict is the Person's
confrontation of all of his past mistakes, specifically, every lie he has ever told in
his entire life—which he does not want to do, and the Attendant's
insistence that he must.
The author's
use of foreshadowing and flashback heighten the anxiety of the audience's response to
the Person's predicament, galvanizing the plot forward. The Attendant tells the Person
that there are ten-thousand boxes of reel-to-reel
tapes that he must listen to. Whereas a cassette tape
can be sixty to one-hundred and twenty minutes in length, reel-to-reel tapes are
hours long. The minute detail presented by the
Attendant that the machine playing the tapes has no "fast forward" button, foreshadows
that this process will take a very, very long time, and
nothing the Person does or says (including heartfelt apologies)
will change it. The Attendant's description of what awaits the Person would appear to
represent the drama's climax, and it underlines the horror of the plot
line:
readability="22">Listening, word by word, to every lie you ever
told while you were alive…Every ugly lie to every person, every single time, every
betrayal, every lying thought, every time you lied to yourself, deep in your mind, we
were listening, we were recording, and it's all in these tapes, ten thousand boxes of
them, in your own words, one lie after the next, over and over until we're
finished.Flashback also
intensifies the audience's reaction to the Person's situation—it appears at the end of
the play in the form of the "first" lie:readability="7">Where have you been? Do you know I've been
looking all over?…I went to Manny's! I went to the pharmacy! The school! I even called
the police! Look at me…I'm shaking! Look at me—Look at me and tell me where you were!
Tell me right now! (Silence. As the Person waits for the lying
response…)This
dialogue must be from the Person's mother, as she mentions having gone to "the school."
We can assume, then, that the Person's lying began very early, and the "punishment" that
lies before him has only just begun. There seems to be no resolution, simply the
nervousness of the Person as he listens to the first taped lie. In fact, because this
accounting of endless lies will take a very long time, a resolution is impossible.
Webster-Merriam online dictionary defines href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolution">resolution
as......the
point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked
out.It would appear that the
only time the "complication" will be worked out is when the Person is finished listening
to all of his lies.Additional
Sources:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Rivera_(playwright)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolution
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