Outline
Prescribed question: How and why is a social group presented in a particular way?
The title of the text for analysis is Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman while the part of the course which the task refers to is Part 3-Literature: Texts and Contexts. My critical response will:
• Introduce the thesis that the characterization of Paulina Salas is representative of the traumatized victims of the Pinochet regime in Chile,
• Analyse the reasons behind the failed judiciary system in newly democratic Chile,
• Conclude by evaluating whether Paulina Salas–and by extension the victims of trauma–will ever reach closure and reconciliation with the past
How and why is a social group presented in a particular way?
Word count: 998 words
How do we keep the past alive without being its prisoner? The play Death and the Maiden attempts to answer this as it explores a broken, post-dictatorship 20th century Chilean society that is still recovering from the ruthless regime of Augustus Pinochet. This essay explores how the protagonist Paulina Salas is representative of the countless oppressed victims of the dictatorship who are unable to break away from the cycle of trauma since society and the judiciary system failed to bring justice to the perpetrators of terror.
The victims are traumatised partly because the justice system has failed them. Paulina’s husband, Gerardo Escobar is part of the newly-formed Investigating Commission which aims to investigate the crimes of the dictatorship that had ended in death and its presumption. While the establishment of the Committee was a good first step to achieving reconciliation for the victims, the vision of the Committee had been problematic from the beginning since the committee is limited by the scope of its own vision. As the play reveals, Paulina herself was kidnapped, raped and tortured multiple times during the dictatorship.
PAULINA: This commission … Doesn’t it only investigate crimes that ended in death? [5]
Yet, as she is alive, the Committee will not look into her case. The sarcastic tone in Paulina’s dialogue above shows how Paulina ultimately sees through and scoffs at the ineffectiveness of the Commission. Paulina then comes to represent all the victims to whom the judiciary system had turned a blind eye to.
Furthermore, during her torture, Paulina was blindfolded and thus lack the empirical evidence needed to indict her perpetrator such that she needed to take justice into her own hands. However, through her ability to recognize Doctor Miranda as his torturer through his smell, mannerism and words, Paulina challenges the link that ties vision with identification and reclaims the validity of her bodily experiences.
PAULINA. It’s his voice. I recognised it… The way he laughs, certain phrases he uses. [16]
This also indirectly questions the reliability of the court of law to deliver justice due to its rigidity in accepting circumstantial evidence–evidence that might not be empirical or quantifiable in nature yet no less valid from the sensory perception’s point of view. Paulina’s situation then allows the audience to sympathize with victims who–aside from being under represented–are also unable to provide acceptable evidence when they receive an opportunity to prove the wrongdoing of the perpetrators.
Despite living comfortably with her husband, Paulina is psychologically trapped in the prison of her own making as she is unable to escape the traumatic experiences of the past. The play opens with a visibly distraught Paulina hiding behind the curtains as a symbol of her withdrawal from the rest of the world. Upon noticing an incoming vehicle, she immediately wielded a gun to investigate. Her immediate response of fear is typical of victims of trauma who have lost their trust in the world. Paulina’s anxiety is tied to her inability to overcome the past, as she remains bound to the events that she had went through. In the words of her husband, Paulina is unable to emancipate herself from her recollections:
GERARDO: […] You’re still a prisoner, you stayed there behind with them, locked in that basement. For fifteen years you’ve done nothing with your life! [26]
Even though she is physically free, Gerardo highlights the psychological barrier that prevents Paulina from escaping her past and returning to her normal life. Paulina–as with victims of trauma–is locked in the mental prison of her own construction. Gerardo also suggests that Paulina is both unwilling and unable to leave the ghost of her past behind and therefore condemned to live with trauma.
However, to escape this ‘prison’, victims of trauma will have to choose between falling into the oblivion offered by madness or confront the painful past. Upon presenting the former option, Gerardo is met with thinly-veiled cynicism from his wife:
PAULINA: Forget? You’re asking me to forget.
GERARDO: Free yourself from them, Paulina, ….
PAULINA: And let him loose so he can come back in a few years’ time? [26]
It is evident that Gerardo is mistaken in his belief that Paulina can break away from the past simply by forgetting. In truth, unless her emotions are fully dealt with, Paulina will never be able to move on as the traumatic memories never cease to haunt her. The quote also alludes to the structure of trauma: stuck in the timeless expanse of the unconscious, traumatic experience continuously re-emerges against the victims’ will. The discord between the husband and wife is also representative of how society fails to understand the plight of the victims in moving on and how perhaps reconciliation can only be reached once we start listening to piece together the impossible history of trauma in an effort at reconciliation.
Towards the end of the play, perhaps the greatest question is the ability of the Paulina and by extension the victims’ ability to reach closure and reconciliation. The play briefly explores the theme of forgiveness and repentance:
PAULINA: […] I can only forgive someone who really repents… [44]
Yet, the Doctor’s refusal to comply even when his life is at stake seems to suggest that in the case of Chile, morality will not prevail and victims will not be able to come to terms with the traumatic experiences they have experienced. In conclusion, the open ending of the play seems to suggest that the victims’ trauma will never come to a satisfactory closure.
Contextually, Paulina’s situation coincides with that of her country because the Chilean government will need to impose silence upon a part of its citizens in order to reunite different factions of its society under the newly formed and therefore fragile democratic system. Similar to the protagonist, Chile will have to walk the thin line between the erasure of a repressed memory that will perpetually resurface sporadically, the silencing of the present hidden in the shadows of a troubled past.
Bibliography
Dorfman, Ariel. Death and the Maiden. Nick Hern Books, 1990.
Maree, C. “Truth and Reconciliation: Confronting the Past in Death and the Maiden(Ariel Dorfman) and Playland(Athol Fugard).” Literator, vol. 16, no. 2, Feb. 1995, pp. 25–38., doi:10.4102/lit.v16i2.608.