Death and the Maiden

Death and the Maiden  by Ariel Dorfman is definitely different than anything else we have read, which I found very interesting. Paulina Salas was raped, but never saw the man’s face. Although she did not the face of the man who caused her this great pain and torture, she heard his voice along with Schubert’s composition Death and the Maiden. This left the sound of his voice being the only thing she could identify him with. Years after this torture occurred, Paulina’s husband, Gerardo Escobar, is given a ride home from a man who stopped to help him, Dr. Miranda. Paulina recognizes Dr. Miranda’s voice as that of her rapist. This brings back all the painful memories, so she decides to hold him captive and interrogate him with the hopes for a confession. Gerardo acts as Dr. Miranda’s lawyer, but helps find a confession with the intentions to set his wife free of her painful past. She finally get’s a confession out of Dr. Miranda and he is set free. What I found very interesting about this play is how it switches from the person getting tortured turning into the interrogator and the person causing the world and self losing pain turning into the person being interrogated. The play made it unclear who is actually being truthful or lying and if the confession is real or if it had been a constructed confession with the help of her husband.