Ariel Dorfmans Death and the Maiden 40 lines analysis Essay Example for Free

Ariel Dorfmans Death and the Maiden 40 lines analysis EssayThe following forty lines from Ariel Dorfmans Death and the Maiden (1990), take repoint in scene 1 of Act 3, after Roberto has been tied up by Paulina and threatened with being tortured the same way as she had been, and past shot. In response to Paulinas threats, Roberto begins confessing the brutality of his actions and his motives. This vindication may be true however, Gerardo has advised Roberto to indulge Paulina, to confess as this would save his life. Whatever the case, the attract is important because it portrays how a man can slide into brutality, without initially meaning to. Second, the extract is important because it helps expose the iniquities of dictatorial armed forces g everyplacenments. Finally, it is also important because it gives us an idea of Robertos character and personality.In this extract we clearly see the stages by which a respectable doctor became a brutal sadistic torturer. Though Roberto s associate told him that helping the torturers could be a way to pay the communists back for what they did to his dad, Roberto stresses that he accepted the job for humanitarian reasons. Firstly, he wanted to help the prisoners who were dying from the tortures as someone to help care for them, someone they could trust. Later on, however, Roberto became complicated in more delicate operations and was asked to sit in on sessions where his role was to match if the prisoners could take that much torture.This indicates that he was there while the prisoners were tortured, watching these brutal scenes. Roberto thought this was a way of saving peoples lives, as he ordered them to city block or the prisoner would die however, watching brutalized him, and slowly the virtue he was feeling turned into excitement. Soon, brutalization took over his life and he began to truly like what he was doing, so much so that, from an observer, he became a participant.Torture became a game for him, a g ame that was partly morbid, partly scientific, as he tortured women to arrest out things like How much can this woman take? More than the other one? Hows her sex? Does her sex dry up when you put the rate of flow through her? Can she have an orgasm under those circumstances? By the end, Roberto had become a sadist totally obsessed with carrying out all his fantasies of sexually agonising women who were entirely in his power, women with whom he could do whatever he wanted. So, stage by stage, we see in the example of Roberto how men can slide from positions of respectability and motives of beneficence and compassion to becoming human monsters, men who delight in the sufferings of others.The tragedy of Robertos slide from being a humanitarian to being a torturer is show by the style of his speech, which reveals that he is an intelligent, educated, insightful man. Firstly we see how Robertos diction indicates his intelligence and level of education. Words such as brutalization and morbid, and phrases such as he lost his capacity for speech, humanitarian reasons and install a totalitarian dictatorship clearly manifest his ability to speak articulately and in a high register. We also see how analytically capable Roberto is, as he does not just describe his own actions but explains why they occurred, carefully dissecting his his motives for workings with the torturers, not to pay the communists back but for humanitarian reasons.He can organize his account in clear, logical stages, with phrases like It was slowly, almost without realizing how, At first, nevertheless afterwards, By the time, I began to, and It became. Additionally, even in the circumstances in which he is giving this confession, in fear of his life, Roberto uses figurative language, suggesting that he has good rhetorical abilities. He uses euphemism, for example, in calling torture sessions delicate operations, and he uses metaphors when he refers to his brutalization as the mask of virtue fell off, and to his descent into sadistic torture as the swamp. So, we see how Robertos use of language clearly reveals his high level of education and intelligence, and this makes us even more horrified at how such a innovative man could have become a brutal torturer of women.More than exposing the degeneration of individual men, exemplified in Roberto, however, this extract also exposes the iniquities of military dictatorships, like the Pinochet regime in Chile, which Dorfman himself had to flee from. We see how military governments divided families though Roberto became a doctor devoted to saving lives, his brother, determined to pay the communists back for what they did to their father, took another path, joining the military dictatorship and becoming a member of the secret services. We also are given the impression of how military dictatorships can convince people to support them by manipulating their sufferings under previous governments, promising some kind of compensation, as Robertos brother joined the dictatorship to pay the communists back for what they did to his father the day the peasants took over his land at Las Toltecas.Such governments also persuade people to support them, as Roberto did, by deceit and lies, getting Roberto involved in torture by saying the prisoners needed someone they could help care for them, but actually slowing criminalizing Roberto as a torturer. The fact that they have had such an enormous solve on Robertos personality shows just how psychologically manipulative such regimes can be. Finally, the fact that, throughout his speech, Roberto refers to the government only as they evokes the way in which such governments work in the shadows, secretly and anonymously, to torture and terrorize. Thus this extract does not only show how Roberto and men like him deteriorate when they become involved in torture it also shows how dictatorial regimes can manipulate such men, facilitating and enabling this deterioration to occur.In con clusion, this extract is very important as, whether Robertos confession is true or feigned, it reveals how even the best of men may slide into such brutality and how military governments can create vile monsters out of admonitory human beings. Through the details of Robertos confession, Dorfman is inviting his audience to consider how a man becomes sub-human. If a respectable doctor, a benefactor to the community, could turn into such a monster because of the effects of such a regime, then what would happen to the rest of society? Dorfman tries to make the reader consider that this incident that has turned Robertos life into a monster might happen to anybody in our society especially in a switch of regime.