Quest For Vengeance And Distorted Personalities Essay

Quest For Vengeance And Distorted Personalities - Essay ExampleThis essay examines the uncomely effects vengeance has had on the central figure of Paulina in Death And The Maiden, and Claire Zachanassian in The Visit.Death And The Maiden, compounding effortlessly elements of suspense, mystery and morality, intertwines them with highly interesting insights into the psychological recesses of a victim, forced to live with the open wounds of her persecution. The play, victorious place in an unnamed country, is set in the times when the country has just escaped from a brutal fascist regime. Paulina lives with her husband Gerardo, who was once an activist working against the dictatorship and is now a instalment of a committee assigned to investigate human-rights violations. A few years back, Paulina was kidnapped and brutally raped and torture while blindfolded, by a sadistic relate who played Franz Schuberts quartet Death And The Maiden. She believes that the stranger that her husb and has now brought into their home is the doctor responsible for her traumatic experience. She imprisons the doctor, extracts a forced confession from him and yet, instead of kill him, lets him go in the end.The play provides the contributor with ample chances to look inside the tortured soul of Paulina and escort the extent to which her personality has been distorted by her past experiences. Paulina insists fiercely that the prisoner be put on trial and adamantly refuses to hear the moderate voice of her husband, showing that she has lost all rationality and cerebrate and is blinded by a terrible rage. By depicting this, Dorfman has shown how thirst for revenge remains dormant, cover beneath the layers of a victims, in this case Paulinas, personality creating an illusion of normalcy, lulling the victims loved ones into a false palpate of complacency. However, when Paulina is shown to be reliving a traumatic experience from her past, her hatred resurfaces again with such viol ence that it shocks. When Paulina binds the doctor to a chair, she gags him using her panties. This action of hers is highly insightful as it shows that the doctors total degradation is her main labour and nothing else, and only the most humiliating treatment meted out to her prisoner will satisfy her. She does this because unconsciously she desires the doctor to go through the same mental and emotional torment that she went through. Seeing him helpless, physically boundary and gagged, writhing in agony and even unable to feed himself, gives her a deep, perverse satisfaction. Keeping her inscrutable activities against the fascist regime of her country and her courage during her captivity in view, we can safely to assume that Paulina is a decent human being with a high moral sense and belief in regal ideals such as freedom and justice, but when it comes to Dr. Roberto Miranda, she remorselessly throws all those ideals to the wind and becomes a tigress, thirsty for blood. Dorfman efficaciously highlights the inner turmoil of Paulinas soul by juxtaposing her tormented psyche with physical proof of how much she suffers. The reader can actually feel her nerves taut with tension due to her clipped dialogues and her equally explosive diatribes. The following tirade of hers, serves as a clear indication of her suffering under a bit of hatred, as she says, And why