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A Short Paper on the Visit: Topic 17 The Visit, a tragic comedy written by Friedrich Durrenmatt that had its first dramatic production in Switzerland in 1956, is a caustic denunciation of the treachery of justice that we have come to use as a standard for how far man has come as species. Through a plot riddled with greed and a face of order, Durrenmatt demonstrated how the richest woman in the world could buy justice on her own terms, and how people would rationalize her want for revenge and their own outright greed for the prospects of a more comfortable life. Durrenmatt called this story "A Tragic Comedy. " More than any other of his plays, this story of an old woman who returns home to wreak an exact and merciless vengeance on her former lover intimately joins comedy and tragedy to support each other in nearly every scene. The play really has three major characters: the old lady, Claire Zachanassian; her former lover and object of her ruthless justice, Alfred lll; and the people of the town of Golden, who make up a kind of composite representation of society itself. Through these characters, Durrenmatt is able to give the audience a darkly comic, breathless, and in the end, unanswerable debate about the nature of justice, redemption and community. The Guelleners (towns people), are offered what can be thought of as one billion dollars to murder a man, named Alfred, whom is branded to be their next mayor for a crime he committed in his youth.
Never mind the irony that because he paid vagrants to lie and brand Claire Zachanassian (then known as Clara) a woman who knew her way around the bedroom he inadvertently setup the chain of events that permitted Zachanassian the opportunity to acquire all her riches. At first the towns people publicly deny her, what she wishes, and the current mayor hypocritically says, Justice can not be bought (Durrenmatt, 36). The town acquires monstrous debts on the assumption that things will work out for them. They believe Alfred Ill will die because that is just the way things should be, and good things should happen to them because they (the Guelleners) are "good people. " The town digs a hole so deep that it can only be filled with the death of Ill. Fortunately, for the town Ill has learned from his life and the tragic mistake of his youth and takes responsibility for his action because of a blind faith he shares in the laws of his land quite similar to the tacit agreement outlined by Plato in The Crito when he too faced a community searching for a sacrificial lamb. Ill realizes that the Guelleners are not evil and that they like he must find meaning in their own lives.
Although his execution will be a mistake, he understands the fatality inherent in life and bears the burden of a town for the prospects of a better life for the people whom he had the privilege of calling countrymen. He allows them to ascribe "right" to expediency, and sacrifices his own life so that they can move past the ugliness of their current greed and simply can continue with the cruel unpredictable game, which is life. Although Durrenmatt decried symbolism ("Misunderstandings creep in, because people desperately search the hen yard of my drama for the egg of explanation which I steadfastly refuse to lay. "), it is hard not to see the poverty of Europe during the Depression and the slow growth of fascism in-between the lines in The Visit. With the ashes of World War II still in their mouths, the people of Europe in the 1950 's faced the growing Cold War and the shadow of the atomic bomb. The question of how a man can hold on to his ideals in the face of grinding poverty was still a strong one. Many saw Claire Zachanassian as a symbol of that desperate fear.
However Durrenmatt was steadfast, Claire Zachanassian represents neither justice nor the Marshall Plan, nor the apocalypse; let her be just that which she is, namely the richest woman in the world who is enabled by her money to act like the heroine of a Greek tragedy, absolutely, cruelly, perhaps like Medea...
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Research essay sample on Richest Woman In The World Woman In The World People
