Ariel Dorfman's "Death and the Maiden"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines Ariel Dorfman's play, "Death and the Maiden, one of the most widely acclaimed contemporary theatre pieces by a Chilean author. The author of the paper examines the play and, in particular, its characters in great detail and, with the aid of relevant literature, attempts to analyze the work and its relevance today.

From the Paper:

"The subsequent discussion with her husband reveals the ghosts that haunt her and her thirst for revenge. She is thus suspicious and discontent when her husband tells her that he has joined a commission which is in charge of discovering the truth with regard to the victims of the former political regime. A relevant reason for Paulina's distrust is that the political scene only appears to have changed from dictatorship to democracy, while many of the political actors have remained the same. Moreover, she does not believe in the honorable purposes of this commission because it has proposed to uncover only the deaths caused by the Pinochet dictatorship and not the surviving victims as well. The question arises thus to the fate of those who have survived but who have remained scarred for life by the abuse they were made to suffer. There seems to be not possible way of actually making justice for the political victims. The idea of revenge as it is formulated in the play is very significant. Paulina seeks revenge because she cannot have justice done to her after what she has suffered. Taking revenge is thus her only possibility of coming to terms with herself and with her past. Gerardo on the other hand represents the effort to forget and put the past aside so as to make the present possible. Interestingly, both of these opposed attitudes only emphasize the impossibility of finding the right answer and of coping with the present. If the past of persecutions and crimes is put behind, then there is no moral satisfaction and truth itself becomes relative. If, on the other hand, the past is constantly made present the emphasis lies on revenge rather than justice and again no moral equity can be reached. As the plot develops, this polarity between Paulina and Gerardo becomes more and more evident."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Dorfman, Ariel. Death and the Maiden. New York: Penguin, 1991.
• Gleiberman, Owen. "Death and the Maiden." Entertainment Weekly n260 (Feb 3, 1995 n260): 32(2).
• Mcclennen, Sophia A. "Ariel Dorfman." The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 20, 2000.
• Morace, Robert A. "The life and times of 'Death and the Maiden'." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 42.2 (Summer 2000): 135(19)
• Pennebaker, James W. and Dario Paez. Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives. New York: Lauren Erlbaum Associates, 1997.

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