The Bottomless Pit — страница 3

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Woyzeck later recounts this experience to Marie quoting the Bible, ? ?And behold there was a smoke coming from the land like the smoke of an oven??? This idea is again depicted when Woyzeck is about to stab Marie. Marie comments that the moon is rising red (the color of blood) and Woyzeck says it is like blood on an iron. It is at this moment that Marie realizes something terrible is about to happen, and senses her own death. Woyzeck?s wading deeper, and deeper into the water is another symbolic element of his further descent into the bottomless pit. Perhaps the most haunting passage out of this entire play, is one in which the little children ask a Grandmother to tell them a story, her idea of a fairytale is the most despondent, apocalyptic tragedy one could recount: ?Once upon

a time there was a poor little boy who had no father or mother. Everything was dead, and there was nobody left in the whole wide world. Everything was dead, and he went away and searched day and night. And because there was nobody left he thought he?d go up to heaven. And the moon looked at him so kindly! But when he reached {it}?he found it was a piece of rotten wood. And then he went to the sun?and found it was a withered sunflower?and he wanted to go back to earth, but the earth was an upturned pot. And he was all alone. And he sat down and cried, and he?s sitting there still, all alone? (pp128) These are the kind of ?fairytales? the children are exposed to and nothing can be bleaker. Buchner does not even let the children escape either, they are doomed along with their

parents, and the apocalyptic and dystopic way in which the world is presented compounds these ideas, suggesting an even worse future for them than the one we have just seen. Buchner was a young man at the time of his death, only twenty-three, yet he managed to leave a legacy behind him, on that has been highly acclaimed in modern times. Woyzeck was to be a ?working ? class tragedy?, a slice out of real life. His protagonist, Woyzeck, is a man doomed to a pitiful existence, constantly plagued with questions that will never be answered. He has a psychosis in which he hallucinates, and this furthers his urge to murder his wife. Woyzeck is forced to deal with daily humiliation. This play is a tragedy, as there is no hope for Woyzeck. The murder of Marie forever breaks his lifeline;

he is lost in the abyss around himself. He falls deeper and deeper into madness. He is a murderer, but he is also a victim of his society, as with his wife. The very construction of the play?s elements, the folk songs, the religious and secular language, all play a part in the overall dark motif that the play projects onto the viewer. Buchner wanted to portray real life, with very human characters, and his view is that society is to blame for all evils, that the world is essentially going to the dogs for these people, in a never-ending cycle of torment and affliction. Buchner also allows the reader no hope to fix this situation, as unfortunately the play was never finished and one shall never know, or feel, the complete conclusion and resolution of? Woyzeck?. 33d