The Use of Time
As appropriate to the title, That Time, the phrase “that time.” or a derivation of it, is used about thirty-five times in the play. The first two words of the play are “that time,” and the last two are “no time” (Beckett 228-235). The voices are trying throughout the play to place all the events in the right time order and also remember when in particular an event took place: “What that the time or was that another time” (Beckett 231). This point becomes even more important when considering the people in the audience: they are sitting in the dark watching the play; they do not know what time it is or how long they have been there; and since the play does not appear to have a distinct story line to follow, an immediate end is never clearly in sight. To the audience, time has little meaning.
Works Cited
Beckett, Samuel. Collected Shorter Plays. NY: Grove Press, Inc., 1984. 226-235.