Abstract

This essay is a comparison of the concept of retribution in two plays: Hanoch Levin’s “Murder and Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden”. It explores the injustices suffered by two characters: a Palestinian father who has his son murdered by Israeli soldiers and a Chilean woman who is kidnapped and tortured during the military dictatorship. The psychological motivations of both characters are uncovered. They practice retribution of their traumas in different ways: the former through violent vengeance and the latter through an unofficial trial to expose the truth. The first involves irrational emotions and lies, while the other involves a rational ordered justice and truth. They lead to very different results: one with cyclical violence and a failure to achieve a real peace, and another with a peaceful transition to normalcy. Both situations reflect the real historical contexts that they are part of: while Chile’s military dictatorship no longer exists, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ongoing.

Keywords: Retribution, Cyclical violence, Trauma

Hanoch Levin’s play Murder and Ariel Dorfman’s Death of the Maiden may seem like very different plays. After all, they are set in very different contexts: the first in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the second in the aftermath of Pinochet’s Chile. Vengeance and violence are part of the story in both plays, but while in Murder it is ongoing and cyclical, in Death and the Maiden it has passed and the revelation of the truth and forgiveness allow it to end, showing the power of forgiveness for ending a conflict and contrasting vengeance with justice. Both a Palestinian man and Paulina Salas have been wronged as part of violent episodes in their countries. However, the Palestinian man takes vengeance and sets off a cycle of violence. Paulina on the other hand gets some justice through the recording of the truth but otherwise forgives and lets her grudge go. So both plays take different paths on the question of retribution.

A Palestinian father has his son killed by three Israeli soldiers. The soldiers debate over what to do with the wounded boy, who begs for pity and for his father. The father asks for his boy and is in disbelief and despair when he finds him (Levin 213-14). The Flushed Soldier tells the father that his son is dead. The father asks “Why?” but the Flushed Soldier replies that “there is no why here” (Levin 215). They lie and try to justify their actions through the struggling of the boy. They then tell him that “what’s done is done” and that the world is full of children (Levin 216-17). The father wanted an answer, a rationalization for why the soldiers had to kill his son, but cannot get one, because “it is the impossibility to provide an answer that constitutes the narrative of [Levin’s] play” (Rokem 561). When the father presses the soldiers, they actually get angry and grab him. They can no longer justify their actions to themselves. A messenger says that “the time of murder is over”, and that their children and grandchildren “will study history with a shrug” (Levin 218). That is, people who study history in the future will not be able to find any rational reason for why there was the immediate change to peace from conflict (Rokem 564).  The soldiers immediately move on to taking about what they are going to eat, totally ignoring the father. The father only asks for his son’s last words. The soldiers merely repeat what they said earlier then leave. Now the father’s pain starts (Levin 219-21). An officer arrives and questions the father, who lies that the room was empty. They tell him to go bury the body, and that they “won’t allow demonstrations”: because they want peace and quiet (Levin 221-22). After this the son tells his father that when he stands “over his grave, / old and tired and forlorn here”, not to “stand then so proud”, but to beg his pardon (Levin 222). The soldiers just want to transition to peace, totally uncaring for the plight of the father. But the father cannot have peace. History and dispassionate words fail to express the pain that he is feeling. He relents control of himself to his son. He has lost his humanity and joy and is basically a dead man inside. His lie to the officer is the price of what has been officially called peace. He imagines in turn his son indulging him to weep and look down at his feet. The father here has an opportunity to let out his emotions and grief. However, he refuses it, keeping his emotions and grief inside him, and his silence is the catalyst for his later horrific vengeance. 

Paulina Salas has been tortured at the hands of the Chilean military dictatorship. Although the play is set after the dictatorship, when she hears a faraway car she stands up fast and grabs a gun. She asks her husband Gerardo who was in the car (Dorfman 1). Paulina has relapses once in a while and has to be taken care of by her husband (Dorfman 5). During her captivity, she was raped many times (Dorfman 23). She recognizes Roberto Miranda. Although Paulina’s other torturers had been vulgar, Roberto was nice and played Schubert to gain her trust and alleviate her suffering (Dorfman 39). She used to love Schubert, but now when she hears him, she gets sick and ill  (Dorfman 15). She has hatred inside, and she imagines torturing her tormenters including Roberto, as this is the only way she can go to sleep and to go out with Gerardo to cocktail parties. When she heard Roberto’s voice, she was furious and imagined Gerardo raping him (Dorfman 27). Gerardo had wanted to bury this past behind them, and for the couple to have a normal life. That is why he is reluctant to build up the situation any further. However, Paulina’s trauma is always with her, and it is only building up inside. Ironically, the only way that she can keep it in is by building up thoughts of violent revenge. She cannot get rid of hr trauma, and the fact that she is trying to may only be worse for her, as she is having constant relapses and gets triggered when she hears the music of Schubert. There is a similar theme of alienation from joy as she no longer loves Schubert the way that she used to. She is also very paranoid and defensive, which is why she has a gun in her home and takes it out when Roberto comes. The whole point of the play will involve her letting out her anger, her trauma and her suffering. Paulina reflects the state of Chile. Just as the nation has to come to terms with the abuses that occurred during the dictatorship, so does Paulina. It is no accident that her husband is part of the tribunal that is meant to investigate the abuses. But the path she chooses is very different than the one that the Palestinian father will take.

The Palestinian father takes the path of vengeance. He intrudes into the bride and groom as they flirt away from their party celebration, asking “what were his [son’s] last words” (Levin 226). He holds a gun to their faces, and the bride begs him not to kill them. He tells the groom about his son’s death. But the groom insists it wasn’t him. The father kills him anyway. The bride begs for her life, swearing that she hasn’t done anything and promising not to tell anyone (Levin 227-30). However, the father insists that he’ll never “quench this thirst: to kill” and is unmoved by her pleas for pity, saying that he “came to disturb the peace” (Levin 231). He rapes the bride. She asks him why he is doing this, but he says that “we’re long past the question” and that it “belongs to other times” (Levin 231-32). He kills her as well then leaves. The father of the groom is shocked at what has occurred and says that “the earth is quaking”. After this there is a song that says that the next war will bring perfect peace (Levin 232-33). This announces the beginning of the war. It is telling that he has intruded into a wedding, one of the most peaceful and serene settings. He is not moved by the pleas of both the groom and his bride. Peace pains him, which is why he cannot stand it that the bride and groom are not running or fighting back. He carries his son on his back: he could not let him go or beg his pardon. Now the question “why?” has become a lamentation as the father deals with his cruel acts (Rokem 567). He is no longer guided by reason but is bloodthirsty. He hates nature which is why he killed the groom when he began to recite his poem about nature. The father through this actions has disturbed the peace and become a catalyst for the next war, which promises to bring peace. But it is just the latest of many previous wars: it is a cyclical conflict that restarts every so often and it is not clear when or if it will even end.

Paulina chooses a very different path. In her house she knocks out Roberto and ties him to a chair. She also puts on Schubert’s Death and the Maiden. When Gerardo enters the room, he pleads with Paulina. But after an argument, she says that they are going to put Roberto on trial  (Dorfman 13-18). Paulina only wants Roberto to confess his actions (Dorfman 28). So Paulina’s form of retribution is very different: she does not need to harm Roberto physically. She only needs to force him to relinquish the truth of his actions and to put it on record, for him to acknowledge what he did, and to make him give it up to her. That way, she will control the information and the truth, not Roberto, and can thus ruin his life if he does anything to her. Paulina’s uncovering of the truth is not just about her getting some justice for what was done with her, but also a way for her to repair her relationship with Gerardo which is becoming strained, and for them to open up to each other (Dorfman 37-38). While Gerardo fears the truth, it is the only way for them and the nation to heal. Later, Gerardo turns on the recorder and she begins to tell her story. In the middle of her story, Roberto’s voice overlaps as the second movement of the song begins, and he talks about how he put on music to gain the prisoner’s trust. At first he tried to save lives. But later he began to push the prisoners to see how much they could take. He concludes by saying that “just as the country is reaching reconciliation and peace” that he should be allowed to live with his terrible secret, and that his conscience will be enough punishment (Dorfman 38-40). Paulina threatens to kill Roberto because he hasn’t repented. Roberto pleads with her, telling her that if she does something terrible to him “somebody else is going to” (Dorfman 44). At the end of the play a giant mirror covers Paulina and Roberto, with slowly moving spots flickering over the audience (Dorfman 44-45). The mirror can be seen as a symbol of self-reflection, as Paulina is in power now and can do anything to Roberto now. She is now her own master and has the opportunity to carry out possible justice. But she has to decide what to do. In the end, she spares Roberto.  

The results of the Palestinian father’s and Paulina’s actions are very different. The Wrecked and Cracked Workers are caught peeping into a mansion by the Orange Whore. The Orange Whore is suspicious of him and is joined by the Purple and Pink Whores. The Orange Whore searches the Wrecked Worker’s pockets. But she finds nothing and starts beating him. There is an explosion of a car which sets a building on fire. The Orange Whore insists that the Wrecked Worker is the murderer, and passersby join in beating him as he pleads for his life and innocence. However, he is knocked out by the Orange Whore. Neighbours then come carrying the body of a boy with a girl behind them. The girl recognizes the Wrecked Worker and insists he was wandering around the beach the night before the wedding. The Orange Whore blames him for their murders. The Purple Whore tosses her a knife and she kills the Wrecked Laborer. The crowd beats his dead body, and the Orange Whore decapitates him (Levin 235-41). The mob is looking for anything to pin to the Wrecked Worker. He is an easy target as he is poor, of a different ethnicity and was also caught peeping. The worker wasn’t even given a chance to defend himself, showing the lawlessness of the cyclical conflict. An officer comes and she tells him that she killed the murder. At this point a messenger announces that “the time of calm is over. The winds of reconciliation have flown away, war is at the gate.” The officer tells the Orange Whore that she has “entered history” (Levin 242-43). The conflict has restarted once again, because it is abrupt: one second peace can turn into conflict. Because both sides are impatient and eager for vengeance, it is too late for reconciliation. Levin “combines the low and high”, as the actions of an ordinary whore will mark the fluctuation between peace and war. History is made up of insignificant events, and also mistaken identities (Rokem 568). The father believed that he found the guilty soldier, and the whore believes she has found someone guilty. The officer’s ovation to the whore is also a testament to the lack of justice, how the officer will literally excuse violence simply because it is committed by his own side. In the epilogue, the Pale Soldier, who is now blind, tells an old man, who he believes is the father, that the son’s last words were “have pity on me, I want papa” (Levin 243-44). Only after it is too late can the soldier reveal this, but “the father is no longer there to hear them”. The honesty and sincerity is only possible when those who need it as consolation are gone. The end result is the lack of resolution or closure to the conflict (Rokem 569).

Meanwhile, in Dorfman’s play there is a peaceful resolution. Gerardo and Paulina are at a concert hall facing a mirror. After the end, they go out and chat with some of the audience. Gerardo says that he is pleased with the Final Report of the Commission. He says that “people are acting with extreme generosity, without the hint of seeking a personal vendetta” (Dorfman 45). He also relates one testimony of an old woman who had been searching for her husband and who had burst into tears due to being asked to sit down, as this was the first time in years she had been asked to sit down. Roberto, who could be real or an illusion, enters and watched Paulina from a distance. Gerardo and Paulina sit down, and Death and the Maiden plays. Paulina turns and looks at Roberto, and they stare for a moment before she looks back at the stage (Dorfman 46). The couple are now living their normal lives, going to the concert hall. Paulina no longer has a vendetta against Roberto. The fact that he could be real or not means that Paulina is no longer intimidated by either the memory or the person of Roberto. That is why she can listen to Death and the Maiden without any problems: she has beaten her trauma. She is like the maiden, now dancing on equal footing with Death and no longer intimidated by him. And she did it without revenge, the same way that the commission of the nation of Chile is objectively seeking the truth without vengeance. There may not be true justice, as there has to be a compromise with the government. But at the same time, the truth getting out there will help in obtaining justice for the nation and healing it. It may be a less than ideal resolution, but it creates a peaceful environment.

Murder and Death and the Maiden are both plays set in tumultuous environments where the protagonists have injustices committed upon them. However, one of the protagonists chooses a violent vengeance, setting in motion a cycle of cyclical violence and conflict. The other protagonists forces out the truth from her tormenter then forgives him, knowing that would be enough. This leads to a peaceful resolution. The implications of this are that exposing the truth about an injustice is enough retribution for it, even if it may not be enough to remedy it, and that blind vengeance creates more problems than it solves. The results of the historical contexts of both plays are very different: Pinochet’s dictatorship was dissolved rather peacefully. Meanwhile, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ongoing and has lasted for nearly a century with both sides committing atrocities and compromise seeming less likely every day.

Works Cited

Dorfman, Ariel. Death and the Maiden. London: Nick Hern Books, 1992. Document.

Levin, Hanoch. “Murder.” Harshav, Barbara, translator. The Labor of Life: Selected Plays. Stanford University Press, 2003. 211-244. PDF.

Rokem, Freddie. “Narratives of Armed Conflict and Terrorism in the Theatre: Tragedy and History in Hanoch Levin’s “Murder”.” The Johns Hopkins University Press (2002): 555-73. Document.