The play, Woyzeck, by Georg Buchner is a very interesting play about Franz Woyzeck, a troubled infantryman who ends up murdering his partner, Marie, because of her infidelity and his own insanity. Woyzeck appears to be an examination of humankind through the philosophical lenses of naturalism, determinism, and nihilism. The play darts from setting to setting with a plethora of different characters, citing lines from the Bible throughout. The manic movement from scene to scene and verbiage of the characters speaks to Woyzeck\u2019s deteriorating mental state.<\/p>\n
At the start of the play, Woyzeck describes his hallucinations about an apocalypse: \u201cLook how bright it is! There\u2019s fire raging around the sky, and a noise coming down like trumpets\u2026 Quiet, it\u2019s all quiet, like the world was dead\u201d (Buchner, 4.1). The imagery of animals when the Carnival Barker is advertising his performance speaks to Charles Darwin\u2019s naturalism. The Carnival Barker says about the monkey, \u201cLook at this creature as God made it: he\u2019s nothing, nothing at all. Now see the effect of art: he walks upright, wears a coat and pants, carries a sword! Ho! Take a bow!\u201d (4.3). The monkey is a metaphor for man; Society and culture have turned humans into spectacle. Buchner is making a statement similar to Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cAll the world\u2019s a stage and all the men and women merely players\u201d and is using Charles Darwin\u2019s idea of naturalism to do so. Man is helpless to the forces of nature and the environment, and it is only nature to seek progress and at least appear to evolve. The use of a nihilistic language in the play contributes to the deterministic feeling of helplessness that Woyzeck seems to suffer from. Woyzeck claims, \u201cOn and on, on and on. Spin around, roll around. Why doesn\u2019t God blow out the sun so that everything can roll around in lust, man and woman, man and beast\u2026\u201d (4.11). Even Grandmother tells a dark story of a poor child with absolutely nothing who searches for meaning but eventually discovers the universe as an overturned pot, \u201c[the child] wanted to go up to the heavens, and the moon was looking at it so friendly\u2026 the moon was a piece of rotten wood and then it went to the sun\u2026 the sun was a wilted sunflower\u2026 [the stars] were little golden flies…\u201d (1.14).<\/p>\n
References to the Bible serve as a contrast to the nihilistic attitudes. The Carnival Barker claims, \u201cIt is written: man, be natural; you were created from dust, sand, dirt.\u201d (4.3). Marie leafs through the Bible later in the play before she is killed, searching for references to adultery. Woyzeck references passages of the Bible relating to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and pain as a symbol for the love of God. Woyzeck\u2019s mental state seems to deteriorate further as the play continues on, culminating in his murder of Marie.<\/p>\n
1. How does Woyzeck relate to other plays that we\u2019ve read that also include themes of Naturalism and Nihilism?
\n2. Is the play also a critique of capitalism?
\n3. The use of imagery of the Carnival Barker and the animals were very fascinating to me. What further significance do they have?
\n4. Why is the play so frenetic in its switching from scene to scene?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The play, Woyzeck, by Georg Buchner is a very interesting play about Franz Woyzeck, a troubled infantryman who ends up murdering his partner, Marie, because of her infidelity and his own insanity. Woyzeck appears to be an examination of humankind through the philosophical lenses of naturalism, determinism, and nihilism. The play darts from setting to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-urban-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-1504-spring-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-1504-spring-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-1504-spring-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-1504-spring-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-1504-spring-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-1504-spring-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-1504-spring-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-1504-spring-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-1504-spring-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}