Excessive Truth in 'Death and the Maiden'

         "People can die from an 

                        excessive dose of the truth, you know."

                       - Gerardo Salas, pg. 55 of Death and the Maiden     

            'How much truth is too much truth?' is one of the many questions posed in Ariel Dorfman's play, and like many of the other unresolved questions, the answer to this one is more or less subjective. But it cannot be denied that within everyone, the search for truth can harm more than it can help. Some things are best left alone, as we see through Paulina Salas' destructive methods for regaining her sense of what is real.

            Paulina's traumatizing captivity during the pre-democratic days of Chile has left her in a state of dormant paranoia for 15 years, and it is arguably this very paranoia which reignites within her the desire for the truth when she hears what may or may not be the voice of her tormentor. So already, Paulina's own grasp of reality is compromised by the effects of PTSD. But what is considered truth within even the sanest of men is also subject to distortion, because truth can mean confession, it can mean closure, and it can mean the reality which we can or refuse to confront. 

              Truth, in Paulina's case, does not literally end in her death. She continues to survive at the play's conclusion, but that is just it: she is not truly alive. Figuratively speaking, the harsh realities with which she was confronted in her days of torture proved to be too much for her, and the woman that existed before this trauma is overcome and her memories of that fateful time plague the rest of her existence.

            Her husband Gerardo, with whom she cannot create nor sustain a life, sees truth as a means to an end. He only wishes for his wife's illness to go away and to no longer interfere with his own personal success. Although he may or may not love her, Gerardo tries to lure the truth out of Paulina both to save a man's life, but also to free Paulina and himself from the burden of her depression. He considers truth to be fatal because his whole marriage is founded on lies meant to conceal truth's lethal properties, just as .

              And Roberto Miranda, of course, is the most literal representation of the notion of truth as a means of destruction. His name, Miranda, even suggests bearing the right to remain silent. Whether or not he is responsible for the torture of Paulina Salas, this right is denied him. And since Paulina believes that all evidence points to the 'truth' of his actions, she will not rest until the memory of him is wiped away and she no longer has to suffer the truth of his existence. The very truth of Paulina's sickness is enough to kill him.

               Of course, the word 'truth' still has countless definitions. It's all subjective:

“Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”