Death and the Maiden: Play Analysis
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN.
Death and The Maiden is a powerful play written by Ariel Dorfman which explored the difficulties a country faces when it changes from a dictatorship to a democracy and also the various brutalities people, but more importantly women, faced during the dictatorship.
This play consists of only three characters: Paulina Salas the protagonist, Gerado Escobar a forty five year old lawyer and Paulina's husband and Roberto Miranda a fifty year old doctor. The basic outline of the play is as follows: Gerado Escobar is returning home after a meeting with the President who has selected the lawyer to head a commission that will investigates the crimes of the old regime that have ended in death when his car has a flat and his spare tire too is deflated. A good Samaritan stops and gives him a lift back home. He introduces himself as Doctor Roberto Miranda and is intrigued when he learns that the person he is helping out is a lawyer by the name of Gerado Escobar as he feels that this name is familiar. After dropping the lawyer home he returns late at night with the excuse of returning Gerado's spare tyre and strikes a conversation with the lawyer who he realised was the head of the newly appointed investigation commission. Upon hearing the conversation between the man and her husband Paulina is startled as she thinks she recognises the voice and mannerisms of the man…..it belonged to the man who oversaw torturing and who participated in raping her as she lay blindfolded in a military detention centre many years before.
The title of the play is taken from Franz Schubert's classic composition 'Death and The Maiden'. The character Paulina in the play loved Schubert whom she considered and especially loved this composition but later resented it as it was the very composition the Doctor Miranda used to play while raping her. We can see what kind of deep impact those days in the detention centre had on her as she mentioned how she would fall sick every time
Death and The Maiden is a powerful play written by Ariel Dorfman which explored the difficulties a country faces when it changes from a dictatorship to a democracy and also the various brutalities people, but more importantly women, faced during the dictatorship.
This play consists of only three characters: Paulina Salas the protagonist, Gerado Escobar a forty five year old lawyer and Paulina's husband and Roberto Miranda a fifty year old doctor. The basic outline of the play is as follows: Gerado Escobar is returning home after a meeting with the President who has selected the lawyer to head a commission that will investigates the crimes of the old regime that have ended in death when his car has a flat and his spare tire too is deflated. A good Samaritan stops and gives him a lift back home. He introduces himself as Doctor Roberto Miranda and is intrigued when he learns that the person he is helping out is a lawyer by the name of Gerado Escobar as he feels that this name is familiar. After dropping the lawyer home he returns late at night with the excuse of returning Gerado's spare tyre and strikes a conversation with the lawyer who he realised was the head of the newly appointed investigation commission. Upon hearing the conversation between the man and her husband Paulina is startled as she thinks she recognises the voice and mannerisms of the man…..it belonged to the man who oversaw torturing and who participated in raping her as she lay blindfolded in a military detention centre many years before.
The title of the play is taken from Franz Schubert's classic composition 'Death and The Maiden'. The character Paulina in the play loved Schubert whom she considered and especially loved this composition but later resented it as it was the very composition the Doctor Miranda used to play while raping her. We can see what kind of deep impact those days in the detention centre had on her as she mentioned how she would fall sick every time