University of Ni

FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY

MASTER THESIS

Jovana Kopunovi

University of Ni
FACULTY OF PHIPLOSPHY

English Department MA studies

VIOLENCE IN CONTEMPORARY ANGLO-AMERICAN DRAMA

Advisor Lena Petrovi, PhD

Student Jovana Kopunovi,4

Ni 2011.

Table of contents:

Abstract ................................................................................................................................ 3 Apstrakt ................................................................................................................................ 4 Introduction: Tracing Violence Back to its Roots .................................................................. 5 The Role of the Theatre......................................................................................................... 8 Destruction of the Innate Sense for Justice: How Monsters are Created............................... 10 War as Institutionalized Violence ........................................................................................ 19 Dehumanizing the Other Dehumanizing the Self .............................................................. 25 Peacetime Victims - Living in the Shadow of the Father .................................................. 31 Conclusion: Turning Looking into Seeing and Breaking the Silences about Violence.......... 39 References: ......................................................................................................................... 44

Abstract
The goal of this paper is to emphasize the importance of the role of contemporary Anglo-American drama in understanding the mechanisms behind violence, as seen in works of Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, Emily Mann, David Rabe and Shelagh Stephenson. Although most of these plays openly criticize the politics and distorted values of western societies, their themes and conclusions are universal. They show us the environment that creates the oppressors and the victims; reveal the means of political manipulation; and propagate the return to somewhat forgotten values such as truth, love, knowledge, understanding and tolerance. The paper deals with the theories which explain when, where and how the violence originates, that is, which connect the origins of violence to the values propagated by the patriarchal society. The paper emphasizes the importance of theatre in making people, who not only stopped reacting to the injustice, but stopped noticing it, open their eyes, take action and stop thinking the way they have been taught. The abusers are created by killing what Bond calls the innate sense for justice, which is clearly seen in his plays Lear and Narrow Road to the Deep North as well as in Five Kinds of Silence by Shelagh Stephenson. The capitalist society, as well, is responsible for the turning into monsters the people who are incapable of finding any meaning in life, which is seen in Bonds play Saved, where there is a brutal scene of stoning of a baby in a pram. Brutal scenes of violence whose hidden meaning is revealed in tragically unrequited desire for love from which even its cruelest characters suffer are present in Sarah Kanes Blasted as well. Plays The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel by David Rabe, Still Life by Emily Mann, The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution and Seven Jewish Children by Caryl Churchill show war as institutionalized violence justified by lies that conceal horrible crimes. Plays Five Kinds of Silence by Shelagh Stephenson and The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution and Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill show the victims of domestic abuse caused by the patriarchal values such as domination, authoritarianism and obedience. Despite all the horrible scenes in which these plays abound, their goal is to open some space for real changes because they show, above all, the consequences of shutting our eyes in front of the truth and keeping quiet about the things that matter.
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Apstrakt
Cilj ovog rada je da kroz drame Edvarda Bonda, Kerol eril, Emili Man, ile Stivenson, Sare Kejn i Dejvida Rejba ukae na vanost i ulogu savremene angloamerike drame u razumevanju mehanizama koji dovode do nasilnikog ponaanja. Iako veina drama o kojima e biti rei otvoreno kritikuje politiku i iskrivljene vrednosti zapadnih drutava, tematika kojom se one bave i zakljuci do kojih dolaze su univerzalni. One nam prikazuju okruenje koje stvara nasilnike i rtve; razotkrivaju sredstva politke manipulacije; i zalau se za povratak pomalo zaboravljenim vrednostima kao to su istina, ljubav, znanje, razumevanje i tolerancija. Rad se osvre na teorije koje objanjavaju kada, gde i zato nasilje nastaje, odnosno koje pojavu nasilja u ljudskoj istoriji povezuju sa vrednostima koje propagira patrijarhalno drutvo. Takoe se govori i o vanosti pozorita koje ima za ulogu da ljudima, koji ne samo da ne reaguju na nepravdu, ve su prestali i da je primeuju, otvori oi i natera ih da se pokrenu i da ponu da razmiljaju drugaije od onoga kako su naueni. Nasilnici nastaju ubijanjem onoga to Bond naziva urodjenim smislom za pravdu, to se jasno vidi u njegovim dramama Lear i Narrow Road to the Deep North kao i u drami Five Kinds of Silence ile Stivenson. Kapitalistiko drutvo je, takodje, odgovorno za stvaranje nasilnika od ljudi koji postaju nesposobni da nadju smisao ivota, o emu govori drama Saved, Edvarda Bonda, koja kulminira uasnom scenom nasilja u kojoj grupa mladia na smrt kamenuje bebu u kolevci. Brutalne scene nasilja, iji se skriveni smisao nazire u tragino neuslienoj enji za ljubavlju od koje pate ak i njeni najsuroviji likovi su predmet drame Blasted, Sare Kejn. Rat je u dramama The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, Dejvida Rejba, Still Life Emili Man, The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution i Seven Jewish Children Kerol eril prikazan kao institucionalizovano nasilje koje se opravdava ideologijama i laima kojima se prikrivaju strani zloini. Drame Five Kinds of Silence ile Stivenson i The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution i Cloud Nine Kerol eril govore o rtvama porodinog nasilja iji uzrok vide u paternalistikim vrednostima poput dominacije, autoritarnosti i poslunosti. I pored svih stranih scena kojima ove drame obiluju, one imaju za svrhu da otvore prostor za stvarne promene jer ukazuju, iznad svega, na pogubnost zatvaranja oiju pred istinom i utanja o stvarima koje su bitne.
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Introduction: Tracing Violence Back to its Roots

In her documentary Goddess Remembered Donna Read reminds us of the 35 000 years of suppressed matrifocal history. This is something we are not taught in schools. For the last 6000 years the patriarchal society has been ignoring or distorting the history of cultures in which female was the central figure.1 This knowledge is dangerous because it undermines the patriarchal power-dominated society based on violence and oppression by showing that the existence of peaceful societies is possible. By examining this forgotten history we have the chance to see when, where and why violence originates and to see that there is a possibility for a different world. An enormous amount of archeological research done by Marija Gimbutas and others proves that the picture of brutal cavemen is wrong. Europes Neolithic people were hunters and gatherers who relied on mother earth and depended upon one another for survival. Gabor Mate, a Canadian psychiatrist, notes in his interview on Democracy Now! that these hunter-gatherer societies provided optimal conditions for the development of children: The normal basis for child development has always been the clan, the tribe, the community, the neighborhood, the extended family. Essentially, the post-industrial capitalism has destroyed those conditions.2 There was no hierarchy in these hunter-gatherer societies. Their primordial deity was a female figure, symbolizing the unity of all life in nature. These peaceful societies, as Marija Gimbutas points out, lasted much longer than the empires that came later. That is the fact that should not be ignored. And yet, the patriarchal society seems to overlook this fact, because the picture of peaceful societies centered on worshiping the female goddess does not fit our classical definitions of civilizations with kings and conquests, and because it undermines our conception of violence as something natural and inevitable. In his interpretation of The Oedipus Myth in Symbolic Language in Myth, Fairy Tale, Ritual and the Novel, Erich Fromm notes how older social norms and ideas undergo distortions and changes: The violence of the antagonism against the theory of matriarchy arouses suspicion that the criticism was not entirely free from an
1 2

Donna Read, Goddess Remembered, (Canada: NFB, 1989) DVD Dr. Gabor Mat on the Stress-Disease Connection, Addiction, Attention Deficit Disorder and the Destruction

of American Childhood, Democracynow.org, <http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/30/dr_gabor_mat_on_the_stress> 10 Jan. 2011

emotionally founded prejudice against an assumption so foreign to the thinking and feeling of our patriarchal culture.3 Oedipus in Fromms interpretation embodies the matriarchal principle and he sees the play as Sophocles attempt to go back to the old religious traditions based on love, equality and justice as opposed to the patriarchal tradition of obedience, violence and dominance. According to Fromm, the theme of the third part of the trilogy, Antigone, is the conflict between the patriarchal and matriarchal principles. Writing about this conflict in the world where the patriarchal principle has already prevailed shows that the artist acknowledged the importance of the female principles and that he favored them. Through this play the audience is invited to see beyond the prejudices against matriarchy- an assumption so foreign to the thinking and feeling of our patriarchal culture. Unfortunately, blinded by the ideologies of patriarchal world, most Ancient Greeks failed to perceive the message, or act upon the received knowledge. . The Golden Age of Greece that the history books call the dawn of Western civilization is actually the beginning of the obliteration and perversion of 35000 years of life that had gone before, as Donna Read points out. It was the beginning of the female inferiority and the beginning of innumerable brutalities that go hand in hand with the values of the patriarchal society. The new system of mythology was created. The earth mother was replaced by a sky father. Woman was no longer considered essential to creation or procreation. Athena, once the goddess of love, and now the goddess of war, sprang from the head of Zeus, a male god, without any contribution from the female. The myth of Hercules also served to reinforce the patriarchy of ancient Greece. Seamus Heaneys poem Hercules and Antaeus, like Sophocles rewriting of the myth of Oedipus, brings out the real causes and consequences of the outthrow of Antaeus and his mother, politically and psychologically. In this poem, Hercules is not presented as a hero, but as an invader who uses violence, not for just cause, but in pursuit of his glory. Hercules heroic acts are said to be performed in the name of gods, but Heaney sees through the hypocrisy of such claim. The same hypocrisy is present in Heaneys homeland, Ireland, made evident in the atrocities committed on both sides in the struggle of Irish Catholics and Protestants. Heaney wrote the poem as a warning to the

Erich Fromm, Symbolic Language in Myth, Fairy Tale, Ritual and the Novel, Literature, Culture, Identity: Introducing XX Century Literary Theory, ed. Lena Petrovi (Ni: Prosveta, 2004) p. 246

people of Ireland which will be bequeathed/to elegists,4 unless they end the fruitless use of violence. But, the Irish and the rest of the world have failed to heed the warning. Hercules defeated Antaeus, who drew his power from the earth mother- Gaia, by lifting him from the earth, thus proclaiming the victory of the patriarchal principle based on violence, conquest and domination. An excellent example of how womens importance was diminished and how violence against women was justified can be found in Orestes, an ancient Greek play by Euripides. Orestes mother Clytemnestra kills her husband Agamemnon because he was willing to sacrifice their daughter for a favorable wind. To avenge his father, Orestes kills his mother, and there is a trial at which, by democratic means, the Athenians have to decide whether the killing of a mother is a crime. That is when the god Apollo appears and says to the Athenians that killing a mother does not signify destroying the primal creativity since the mother is only the nurse tending the seed planted by the father who is the true parent. We see how the perverted world in which an innocent child can be sacrificed diminishes the importance of the mother. The hypocrisy of Apollos speech is revealed by a question of one Athenian who wishes to know how he can teach them not to kill their fathers when the young gods themselves have to kill their fathers to become gods.5 Similar hypocrisy is present in the Christian Church, as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice points out to the Christians parading their moral superiority at his trial: You have among you many a purchased slave. And it is precisely The Book of Genesis, according to Dona Read, that established the female inferiority forever. That is how our destructive culture of wars and battles for dominance began. The principle of domination is the main driving force behind the patriarchal society. Its main product is war. Wars are fought all the time in one part of the world or another, and people are so used to this state of affairs that they do not even think about it any longer. As long as there is peace at home, we do not get too stressed about the wars and horrible violence going on in other parts of the world. The ideologies developed to justify wars are so strong that they make us believe that wars are fought for just causes even though most of them, if not all, are fought for dominance, power

4 5

Seamus Heaney, Hercules and Antaeus, North ( New York: Oxford UP, 1976) p. 53. See Symbolic Language in Myth, Fairy Tale, Ritual and the Novel in Literature, Culture, Identity: Introducing XX Century Literary Theory, pp. 244-245.

and material gain. Injustice is legitimized in the capitalist society and violence is seen as a necessary evil.

The Role of the Theatre

In his Nobel Lecture Art, Truth and Politics Harold Pinter talks about the interest of the politicians to gain and maintain power and notices: To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.6 The role of the theatre should be to unweave the tapestry of lies; to give us the knowledge of the things we are not taught in school and make us act upon this new knowledge. However, the world we live in makes this endeavor extremely difficult. Bond perfectly describes the condition of post-modern society which seems to be heading towards its extinction: Every species before it becomes extinct enters into a state of post-modernism. There are signs that we no longer speak a human language. Our philosophers cannot tell us the meaning of things, our moralists cannot tell us how we should act, we are armed with weapons so powerful that peace brings us the dangers of wars, our media tell us of distant disasters to distract us from dealing with our own, our democracy cannot define freedom for us, our politicians do not understand what they are doing, our children walk away from us.7 Raymond Williams in Drama from Ibsen to Brecht writes about passion for truth which he sees as the driving force behind great naturalist drama. He notes that seeing the man-made environment in its detail will help us see the truth about people. The environment is thwarting, and Williams points to the metaphysical function of the room as a trap where the human consequences of the decisions made elsewhere are lived out: The rooms are not there to define the people, but to define what they seem to be, what they cannot accept they are there are forces inside these people in these rooms which cannot be realized in any available life.8 We see individuals who are breaking away from what is offered as general truth in the world other men have made. We see the separation between the world of action which is the world of others and the world of consciousness which is ones own. This presents a move to early

Harold Pinter, The Nobel Prize Lecture, Art, Truth and Politics, 2005, Nobelprize.org. 15 Jan. 2010 < http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html> 7 Edward Bond, Language, Literature, Culture, Identity: Introducing XX Century Literary Theory, p. 394 8 Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (London: Penguin, 1973) 387- 390.

expressionism and its drama of a single mind. We are offered a unique history which paradoxically represents a general truth. Both naturalism and expressionism are deeply critical; they show the world as unacceptable and intolerable. But, as Williams suggests, to get truly outside, the isolated consciousness has to: try to become, to identify itself with, an objectively critical or revolutionary consciousness. Political awareness is essential. Naomi Wallace insists on encouraging the students of drama to reexamine the mainstream culture and to read history constantly and aggressively, which will give them the power to reimagine themselves. As opposed to those who claim that creativity is something outside history and politics, Wallace writes: I think that a more ferocious juice can be found in the veins of history, which sadly, are too often filled with blood. Not the blood of the few, not the blood of the privileged, but the blood of the many.9 Amiri Baraka, as well, insists that the Revolutionary Theatre will show victims so that those in the audience may understand that they are the brothers of victims and that therefore they themselves are the victims. The theatre thus acquires the power to reshape the world because it causes the souls of the people in the audience to be moved to actual understanding of what the world is, and what it ought to be.10 And to make us see what the world is, Naomi Wallace insists that the dramatists have to write about: the dying of millions of people in Africa because of the rampant greed and criminal price-hiking of multinationals; the dying and maiming of thousands in the Middle East by U.S. bullets; the fact that the bullets that end in the bodies of Palestinian children, fired by Israeli solders are paid for by American taxes. It is dramatic, but Wallace points out that we are involved in the real drama happening all around us. As Boal put it: We are theatre! , and we are all actors and being a citizen is not living in the society, it is changing it.11 In his poem A Writers Story Bond shows that the worlds violent history has not ended with the end of the World War II:

Naomi

Wallace,

On

Writing

as

Transgression,

2007,

Playwrightsfoundation.org, 11

<http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/images/previous%20teachers/at_jan08_transgressionFINAL.pdf> Nov. 2010

10

See

Amiri

Baraka,

The

Revolutionary

Theatre,

Nationalhumanitiescenter.org

<http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text12/barakatheatre.pdf > 18 Dec 2010.

11

Augusto Boal, The 2009World Theatre Day International Message. Worldteatreday.org, 27 Mar. 2009, <http://wtd09.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/the-2009-world-theatre-day-inernational-message/> 15 Dec. 2010.

Like all who lived at the midpoint of this century or were born later I am a citizen of Auschwitz and a citizen of Hiroshima Of the place where the evil did evil and the place where the good did evil Till there is justice there are no other places on earth: there are only these two places12

Despite all the horror, he leaves hope by ending his poem with: But I am also a citizen of the just world still to be made.13 And the function of theatre should be to show how this world is possible: The law of plays must be cause-and-use/ To break necessity and show how there may be justice.14 It is very challenging for dramatists to reveal the hidden truths for both themselves and the audience. As Baraka points out in his The Revolutionary Theatre, most Western artists are in sympathy with the most repressive forces, and they do not need to be political. Naomi Wallace rightly notices that we live in a culture that is hostile to creativity and original thought that does not serve capitalism, empire, and the most virulent by-products of those forces: racism, homophobia, classism and sexism.15 Many dramatists, as she observes, are unconsciously influenced by these values, which appear in their work. Teachers need to make students of drama aware of this fact and make them think outside their own experience, gender, race and class. This is something that Shelagh Stephenson, Edward Bond, Sarah Kane, Emily Mann, David Rabe and Caryl Churchill manage to do. By examining their plays we see how distorted values of patriarchal society create the conditions for all sorts of violence.

Destruction of the Innate Sense for Justice: How Monsters are Created
She punches my head, bang, what are you doing up? Its cold upstairs, Mum, its pitch dark, its like being blind I dont want to go blind like my dad I dont want to go blind. She pulls me by my arm, twists with both hands like shes wringing out washing. Dont be so bloody soft. Dont be so bloody soft.16

In his Preface to Lear, Bond writes about the causes of violence in our society. He talks about the innate sense for justice that every child is born with. The child expects that its needs for love, protection, emotional reassurance will be satisfied. As Fromm explains: The strongest longing of the infant, a longing which never leaves
12

Edward Bond, A Writers Story, Literature, Culture, Identity: Introducing XX Century Literary Theory, p. 394 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 On Writing as Transgression 16 Shelagh Stephenson. Five Kinds of Silence. Memory of Water/Five Kinds of Silence. (New York: A & C Black Publishers Ltd, 1997) p.102

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man until, indeed, he returns to mother earth, is the longing for mothers love; mother for him is life, warmth, food, happiness, security. It is unconditional love, the experience of being loved not because I am obedient, good, useful but because I am a mothers child, because I am in need of love and protection.17 In our patriarchal society where feminine values of love, compassion, tenderness are considered a sign of weakness, we fail to meet this basic need. Fathers love, as Fromm points out, is not egalitarian and unconditional, but based on obedience and competition. As Bond explains, the child soon learns that it is born in an unjust world in which it is often deprived of its physical and emotional needs. That is precisely what happens to Billy in Shelagh Stephensons Five Kinds of Silence. Without a father figure and with an uncaring mother, Billy suffers both physical and emotional abuse. Instead of giving her son protection and love, Billys mother, who shows no traces of motherly feelings, gives him a lesson on how to be a good subject to the patriarchal society. She urges him to become tough, show no feelings and get used to the darkness which is physical in the scene quoted above, but is also metaphorical. As Bond puts it, the constant deprivation of the childs needs creates an aggressive response on the part of the child. Without justice they are not able to be happy or allow others to be happy, of which Billy is a perfect example: I dont remember pain, I dont remember pleasure. I was born aged six with teeth and a black, black heart.18 In his statement that he was born at the age six, we see that Billy was not born evil. He was made such by the circumstances in his unhappy childhood. Through Billys flashbacks Shelagh Stephenson shows how a monster is created. The earliest memories that he has are not of a loving and warm family, but of the cold and of the dark where he was left alone. He heard and saw his parents fight and saw his mother throwing out his blind and drunk father on the street. Instead of giving him comfort his mother feeds his fears: Keep your fury, Billy, she says, youll need it out there, but never cry, or Ill send the devil to you. No, No, I wont cry, dont send him, I dont want to see him, dont shut the door, what if he comes, Mam, what if he comes?19 The devil did come, even if only metaphorically, and took Billys soul. The process of soul-murder to which many children in the patriarchal capitalist society are
17

Erich Fromm, Bachofens Discovery of the Mother Right (1955). Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy.( New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1997) p. 11. 18 Five Kinds of Silence, p. 110. 19 Ibid., p. 111.

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subjected takes place here. Left without a father figure and with a mother who fails in her most important role, Billy becomes fascinated by the army, the only place where things seem to be in order and organized and where it seems that nothing can go wrong. This order becomes his obsession and he becomes increasingly violent. He takes sadistic pleasure in imagining killing people. He even kills a neighbors cat and he feels good seeing it squirm and cry. One of the earliest memories his daughter Janet has of him is his smile while watching a gold-fish squirm outside the bowl. Once he is married, Billy abuses his wife and daughters physically, emotionally and sexually. The family is completely isolated from the outside world and Billy is able to keep things in order by keeping an eye on his wife and daughters who he dresses the same. He even buys his daughters wedding rings to keep other men away. They are prevented from developing their identities, from forming normal relationships with people and having their own families. Any pretext serves Billy to beat his wife and daughters. Such a trivial thing as buttering his toast the wrong way can make him break his daughters or wifes nose. He starts to abuse his daughters sexually when they are thirteen. All these images are horrible and we find about the monstrosities through the eyes of the victims, through their soliloquies, streams of consciousness and conversations with the policemen, lawyers and psychiatrists. The testimonies of these women show us the horror that Billy put them through. They make the play very personal and touching. It is amazing how Shelagh Stephenson manages to make her play utterly disturbing without using explicit scenes of violence. The portrayal of violence in Edward Bonds plays Lear, Narrow Road to the Deep North and Saved is somewhat different. In treating the subject, Edward Bond unlike Shelagh Stephenson, confronts the audience with explicit scenes: I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners.20 Bodice and Fontanelle, Lears daughters in Bonds Lear, are as violent and ruthless as Billy and this is enacted on the stage. If they show any traces of compassion, it is only in the first scene. They are still not completely adjusted to the injustice. They object to their fathers killing of an innocent workman because of the delay in the building of a wall, whose alleged purpose is to protect the people, but which divides

20

Edward Bond, Lear. Plays: Two. (London: The Master Playwrights, 1978) p.4

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them instead, and many of them lose their lives building it. After the first scene, they show no traces of humanity or femininity. They plot against their husbands and each other and are responsible for the most disturbing scenes in the play. An especially disturbing scene is the one in which Warrington is tortured because of his loyalty to Lear. While Warrington is being tortured, Bodice is calmly knitting. She remains extremely calm to the end of the scene of brutal torture, whereas Fontanelle is sadistically excited. She pokes Bodices needles into Warringtons ears, thus deafening him. There is no trace of feminine feelings of empathy, love and compassion in them. We have to ask ourselves what made them so violent and cruel. In Shakespeares King Lear we are given a hint that Goneril and Regan were not given as much love as Cordelia who was the favorite daughter. Bonds Lear is one of the modern versions inspired by Shakespeare, which elaborates further on this idea. Just like Billy in Five Kinds of Silence, in Bonds Lear, Lears daughters Fontanelle and Bodice die without learning anything, , but the viewers do learn what caused their inhumanity. In the autopsy scene after the execution of Fontanelle, Lear realizes that he had his responsibility in the formation of his daughters characters and that they were not born evil or meant to be evil. He was the one who crushed their innocence, and he realizes that, albeit too late.
She sleeps inside like a lion and a lamb and a child. The things are so beautiful. I am astonished. I have never seen anything so beautiful Her body was made by the hand of a child, so sure and nothing unclean If I had known this beauty and patience and care, how I would have loved her. Did I make this and destroy it?21

While in a prison cell, Lear asks the Ghost to bring him his daughters. The apparitions of Bodice and Fontanelle are young girls. They sit with their heads on his knees. We see what it could have been like if they had got the love they needed from their father. We see that at some point Lears daughters were kind, loveable and loving. It is their fathers neglect and failure to show them what love is that turned them into monsters. Another example of how pedagogical betrayals can harm a childs psyche and make a monster can be seen in Edward Bonds Narrow Road to the Deep North in the characters of Shogo and Georgina who have themselves been the victims of the unjust

21Lear,

p. 73

13

society and its distorted values. They turn into oppressors, responsible for two different modes of social violence in the play. The first of them, Shogo was betrayed as a little baby by a Buddhist priest and a poet, Basho, who failed to give him protection and shelter when his poor parents left him by the river. Bond here reveals the hypocrisy and paradoxes present in those who consider themselves religious. He shows how extreme religious dogmas can be in one other scene in which several priests, including Basho, would rather let a person die then break the sacred pot that is suffocating him. Nothing is more sacred than human life, but Basho fails to realize that. In his search for enlightenment, he ironically fails to show compassion for an innocent baby and attributes all the babys suffering to the irresistible will of heaven. The irresistible will of heaven is too often used as a justification by religious people who are unwilling or too frightened to try to do something about the status quo. Basho uses it to absolve himself of responsibility that every adult should bear- to provide the child with protection, love and care needed for normal development. He does not only betray his responsibility as a human being, but he also betrays his role of an artist by withdrawing from the social problems of the world. The consequences of Bashos failure are seen thirty years later, when Shogo, once neglected, weak and unprotected, becomes a powerful tyrant who rules by atrocity and who is responsible for many violent deaths. Just like Billie in Five Kinds of Silence, Shogo becomes a perfectionist and prides himself in his citys drains, schools, churches, water, hospitals He believes that the world is evil, a tigers mouth, and considers himself and his arbitrary violence as the lesser of two evils. Shogo is not completely wrong. He was born into the world that robs its children of their innate rights to justice, love and protection; the world that believes in innate evil; the world of Basho, who is its perfect representative. Unlike Lear, Basho never realizes his mistake. When he learns that Shogo is the baby he had left to die, he does not regret that he had not protected it. He regrets that he had not killed it when he had a chance. Unlike blind Lear, who realizes that his daughters were not born as monsters but were made such, Basho in his moral blindness does not even consider this possibility: O god forgive me!- If I had looked in its eyes I would have seen the devil,

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and I would have put it in the water and held it under with these poets hands22 Bashos speech shows the hypocrisy of religion which has too often been put to violent use. Even the murder of a baby can be rationalized. The baby did not have the devil in its eyes, but the devil did come when the society failed to protect the child. The final and the most awful of Shogos cruelties is the murder of five innocent children among whom he believes the Emperors son is hidden. He had spared the childs life before, but now, feeling threatened by him, he sees no other option than to kill him. In spite of all the violence, Bond shows that evil is not innate. Shogo shows mercy by not killing the young Emperors son, as long as his rule is not threatened. His lack of formal education also saves him from falling pray to religious dogma. He is the one who breaks the sacred pot, thus saving the life of a young priest whose head had been stuck in it; and it is precisely the destiny of this young priest, Kiro, that shows what Shogo could have been like if only he had been given love and protection. Kiro was left as a baby, just like Shogo, but he was fortunate enough to be taken by a poor priest who was a beggar, but nonetheless, a much better person than Basho. Kiro, unlike Shogo, grows up into a calm and grateful person and he stays loyal to Shogo for saving his life even when Shogo is defeated by the English colonizers. The coming of the colonizers is marked by a new form of social violence which is propagated by Georgina, a moral monster who is herself a victim of a poisonous pedagogy:
So instead of atrocity, I use morality. I persuade people- in their heartsthat they are sin, and that they have evil thoughts and that theyre greedy and violent and destructive, and- more than anything else- that their bodies must be hidden, and that sex is nasty and corrupting and must be secret. When they believe all that, they do what theyre told. They dont judge you- they feel guilty themselves and accept that you have the right to judge them. I learned this from my Scottish nanny. She taught our Prime Minister, the Queen, the Leader of the Opposition, and everyone else who matters. 23

Fromm perfectly explains the social function of sexual repression:

Insofar as sexual pleasure as such is declared to be something sinful, while sexual desires remain perpetually operative in every human being, moral prohibitions always become a source of production of guilt feelings, which are often unconscious, or transferred to different matters.

22 23

Edward Bond, Narrow Road to the Deep North Plays: Two, p. 222 Narrow Road to the Deep North, p. 208

15

These guilt feelings are of great social importance. They account for the fact that suffering is experienced as just punishment for ones own guilt, rather than blamed on the defects of the social organization. They eventually cause emotional intimidation, limiting peoples intellectual- and especially their critical-capacities, while developing an emotional attachment to the representatives of social morality.24

Georginas nanny stands for all that is negative about child rearing; and she is mentioned in the play as the nanny of all the important people in Britain, even the Leader of the opposition, which shows how deeply the poisonous pedagogy is rooted in British society. Presenting religion in this way leaves no room for the talk of love, compassion, human bonds. People are characterized as innately evil and there is nothing they can do about it except suppress all their needs and feel guilty all the time. Georgina uses this to control and rule people. Despite all the wrongdoings, Georgina shows that she is capable of human feelings and compassion, when it is too late. She tries to protect the children and goes mad after their murder. In her character Bond, once more, shows his belief in human goodness that exists in all people, but is too often smothered by social injustice. And it is social injustice that is responsible for the most controversial scene in all Bonds plays- the stoning of a baby in a pram by a group of dissatisfied and frustrated young men, including the babys father. Because of the outrage that this scene caused in Britain, Bond had to explain its meaning and its purpose. The scene, as he points out, shows a paradigm of violence at whose root is a child. This violence is not necessarily literal. The crime against innocence is performed on daily basis. The children are metaphorically murdered all the time by being taught to adjust to the demands of modern capitalist society. Their individuality is crushed and all the injustice that they are forced to accept makes them frustrated. This frustration causes numbness, madness and violence and creates various kinds of monsters in which Bonds play Saved abounds. In one of the scenes, a young man, Pete, who will later take part in the stoning of the baby, brags about killing a boy with his van and getting away with it. He describes the crime as something he is proud of. His story does not appall his friends. What is more, they admire him for what he has done.

24

Erich Fromm, The Theory of Mother Right and Its Relevance for Social Psychology (1934), Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy, pp. 35-36.

16

What we see in almost all the characters in Saved is the moral emptiness, which is itself a product of dehumanizing society. The social conditions of the working-class world create monsters devoid of any human feelings. We see spouses who do not communicate; a mother who is unable to feel anything for her child and who neglects it in every possible way; and a group of young men, the victims of social injustice, who are unable to find any purpose in life and who become beasts. Just like Fontanelle in the scene of Warringtons torture in Lear, the young men are sadistically excited while torturing the defenseless baby. The most horrible scene of violence in the play is not there only to shock the audience, as some critics have implied. It is there to show how ill the society has become. Trained to obey and not question anything, its subjects never learn to think critically and when the violence bursts out, it is misdirected at the weak and the unprotected, instead of being directed at the unjust system which has caused it. This is precisely what the ruling-class needs: Some of their cries while they murder the baby are ruling-class slogans. This is the way in which ruling class anger and aggression can be used to strengthen the unjust social relations that cause its anger and aggression, and the ruling class can recreate in an increasingly inhumane forms the social conditions which it claims as the justification for its power.25 When the baby in Saved is dead, none of the murderers shows any signs of remorse. The mother pushes the pram without even noticing that the baby is dead. Life goes on as if nothing had happened. And just when it seems that the moral depravity, emptiness and indifference have reached the point of no return, Bond leaves some hope in the last scene where we see Len, the only character capable of feeling compassion and love, mending a chair. Bond described the last scene as almost irresponsibly optimistic. Just as in Conrads Heart of Darkness, honest work is seen as a saving grace. What is more, the importance of family is emphasized. Despite all the damaging effects of human alienation, the family in Saved has not disintegrated completely, which had in previous scenes seemed inevitable. Bond leaves room for the characters to redeem themselves through human bonds.

25

Edward Bond, Authors Note, Plays One, p. 15

17

Bonds play Saved inspired Sarah Kane to write a play named Blasted. The violence in Blasted is as brutal as the violence in Saved, even more so. In this play there are scenes of rapes, eye-gauging, cannibalism, humiliation. Just like Saved thirty years earlier, Blasted was misunderstood by many critics. They were able to see only the brutality and not its cause and purpose. The hidden meaning of violence is revealed in the play in the unrequited desire for love from which even its cruelest characters suffer. Sarah Kane places the action in a very expensive hotel room in Leeds- the kind that is so expensive it could be anywhere in the world.26 The location is precise, but the fact that it could be anywhere in the world shows the universality of human condition. A hotel room does not provide warmth and belonging of home and it shows the alienation which is experienced, in one way or another, by all the characters in Blasted. Ian, the protagonist, is a racist, a misogynist and a homophobe. He is a journalist whose reports on horrible violence are devoid of any compassion. He is not only alienated from the horrible events he describes, but also from his own family. We learn that he is divorced and that his only son hates him. He cruelly rapes Cate, a young girl, who seems to be the only one who cares about him. And yet, despite his abuse, he keeps telling Cate that he loves her and that he needs her because she is taking him to some better place. Another character, responsible for the most horrible scenes in the play is a soldier who comes into the hotel room and rapes Ian and sucks out his eyes, and then commits suicide. Once again, all this violence is not there for the sake of violence. We learn that the soldiers girlfriend was cruelly murdered and that all that he is doing is actually an act of revenge. Once again, just like in Bonds Saved, the violence caused by injustice is misdirected at the weak and the unprotected. The soldier describes the atrocities he had witnessed and taken part in and he reenacts them in the hotel room. What happened to his girlfriend turned him into a beast, and yet, he is not completely devoid of any feelings. At one point he says that he would be lonely if he killed Ian, and is crying his heart out while raping him.

26

Sarah Kane, Blasted, Complete Plays,( London: Metheun, 2001) p. 35

18

After all the horror, the last scene of Blasted leaves some hope. Ian, blind and reduced to an animal, eats a dead baby and ultimately dies with relief. Death seems to be the best thing that could have happened to him. Then, ironically, it starts to rain and Ian is brought back to life. There is no easy way out. Cate returns to the room with the food that she got by letting the soldiers rape her. She shares this food with Ian. This ultimate act of kindness after all the horror that both Cate and Ian have experienced leaves some hope for humanity. The play closes with Ians: Thank you. ***. In Blasted, Narrow Road to the Deep North, Lear and Five Kinds of Silence we see how crushed innocence and silenced cry for justice create monsters. What is common to Sarah Kane, Edward Bond and Shelagh Stephenson is that they are not interested in violence for the sake of violence. They all show its causes and consequences and thus make the audience aware that all this violence is not natural, but a product of the deep malady of modern patriarchal society with its distorted values.

War as Institutionalized Violence

Billy: Our town is full of soldiers. Theres a war on. I like the shine on their boots, I like the sound they make on the cobbles, harsh and strong, it sets my teeth tingling. They are polished and trim and neat these men, belted and tucked and ready for action. Already Im hooked. I follow them to their barracks, oh, the neatness of it, the rows of bunks, the order, Im beside myself with longing. Each bed tight made, corners neat and parceled, no gaps, no mistakes, theres method in this.27

In one of Billys flashbacks to childhood we find out about his fascination with the army. We see how the army can seduce a young and insecure boy who feels the need to belong and to see himself as a part of an organization where everything seems to be in order. He does not see that this order is achieved at the cost of extravagant personal repression, as Trilling would put it.28 This outward neatness of the army barracks at home presents young men, usually from underprivileged backgrounds, with an idealized picture of the army thus seducing them to join it. This happens to Pavlo Hummel in David Rabes play The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel as well as to Mark
27
28

Five Kinds of Silence, p.113 See Lionel Trilling. On the Teaching of Modern Literature. Literature, Culture, Identity: Introducing XX

Century Literary Theory, p. 82

19

in Emily Manns Still Life, but they both soon learn about the brutality of the army and that there is nothing noble or heroic about war. While Pavlo Hummel dies in war, Mark returns home traumatized, bringing the brutality with him. The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel begins at the chronological end of the story with Pavlos holding a grenade which has been thrown into a Vietnamese bar. Before he dies, through a series of flashbacks, we learn about his training and his experiences in the Vietnam War. His death is ironic. We find out that the grenade that killed him had not come from the enemy but from a jealous American soldier, who was annoyed because Pavlo had interfered with his seduction of a local prostitute. There is no noble death. In the character of Pavlo we see what ideology and false ideals can do to a young person. His name, Pavlo, brings to mind Ivan Pavlov and his classical conditioning experiment, symbolizing Pavlos tendency towards unthinking obedience. This makes him a potentially good soldier, which in the domination-driven patriarchal capitalist society means- a perfect killing machine. However, Pavlos socially conditioned tendency to obey is contrasted with his natural feminine side that he has been trying to suppress and hide all his life. He tries to suppress his individuality and present himself as a tough-guy, which is partly his mothers responsibility: she is the one who tells him unrealistic stories about his father, whom he never met, but with whom he tries to identify nevertheless. However, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot completely fit in with other soldiers undergoing the training with him. David Rabe uses the example of the basic training for soldiers to show how brain-washing mechanisms in capitalist societies function. We see that the soldiers are not motivated by any noble calling. The purpose of training is to validate extreme violence, stupidity, sexism, racism and obedience. We see how this is implanted in their brains through the training chants that they are ordered to recite while marching. They are ironically called the echo company since they repeat what they hear without any questioning. The reason for Pavlos failure to be accepted in such a company lies in the fact that others can sense that he does not have the right temperament to be made into a killing machine. During the training he is made fun of and he even attempts suicide as a way out. His transformation into a soldier without individuality is seen at the end of Act one, when he is given a clean uniform, the symbol of his new identity, fitting in with

20

other soldiers. Once in war, he even kills a defenseless Vietnamese farmer. Despite all this, he retains his sensitive side. Pavlos attachment to a local prostitute, Yen, shows how different he is from others. He loses his virginity to Yen, while other soldiers are practicing handling their rifles. Rabe places Pavlos initiation into manhood in juxtaposition with other soldiers. We see to what extent the patriarchal society distorts human bonds and human nature. The soldiers are taught to treat their guns as women and treat their enemies as less than human: SGT. TOWER: You got to love this rifle, Genlmen, like it you pecker and you love to make love. You got to care about how it is and what can it do and what can it not do, what do it want and need.29 Treating a gun as a woman shows the position assigned to women in patriarchal society. They are treated as objects. Pavlo cannot conform to this. For him Yen is not an object which is easily replaceable. He does not want to have anything with any other prostitute, which ultimately costs him his life. Pavlo does not lose his voice of reason, which is in the play represented by Ardell, a black solder who is a projection of Pavlos inner and wiser self. Ardell is the one who helps Pavlo understand how lost he is and how wrong he had been about believing in the great causes that his society presents him with. He tries to make Pavlo see the suffering that both sides in war experience and that whatever he does to the Other the damage will be mutual: When you shot into his head, you hit into your own head, fool!30 Pavlo is
31

unable

to

cope

with

this

truth:

What?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

As Rabe in the Authors Note writes: His physical efficiency, even his mental efficiency increases, but real insight never comes. Toughness and cynicism replace open eagerness, but he will learn only that he is lost, not how, why or even where. His talent is for leaping into the fire.32 Even if Pavlo does not get the real insight, the people in the audience do; only if they are willing to open their eyes and their minds. They are shown the techniques of coercion and acquiescence that their society utilizes to create obedient subjects, which should make them better equipped to refuse and resist when the same manipulation is tried on them.
29

David Rabe, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, Famous American Plays of the 1970s, ( New York:

Laurel, 1981) p. 95
30 31 32

Ibid, p. 108 Ibid. Ibid., p.31

21

Plays such as The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel do not let the audience just sit back and relax. They make us look and see things in a new way. They are ambiguous ideologically. As Rabe puts it himself, his plays are not blatantly anti-war and theyre certainly not for it, which makes it difficult for the audience to decide how to take them. The play does deal with the Vietnam War, but this war is not its main concern. The main concern of the play is to show the illness of the society that makes wars possible in the first place. The same is true of Emily Manns Still Life. What makes Manns play even more disturbing is that it talks of real people describing actual events. Mann says that the play is a documentary because it is a distillation of interviews. She uses the experience of an ex-marine who fought and killed in

Vietnam, but she does not describe her play as a play about Vietnam. Its goal is to examine the operation of violence in American culture. Marthin Luther King expressed the same idea in Beoynd Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, when he said: The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.33 Mann examines Marks memories of Vietnam War together with domestic violence that goes on at home. Just like Pavlo Hummel, Mark goes to war because of his false image of what war and army are about. The patriarchal society demands of its men to prove themselves by fighting for their country in unjust wars fought for power and domination. This ideology is ever present. Bond in his play Saved touches upon this subject, despite the fact that his play does not deal with war. Len, who is the only character in the play capable of human feelings and compassion, is characterized as weak by Harry, Pams father, because he did not have a chance to fight in World War II and to kill people. It is ironic that fighting in a war should be glorified by Harry, who lost a child in the bombing of London during World War II. The key to success of war ideologies lies in their power to convince men who go to war that what they are doing is important for the whole society and that it makes them special. Harold Pinter explains perfectly how this system functions in his Nobel Lecture:
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American
33

Martin Luther King. Beoynd Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. Americanrethoric.com. Web. 16 Dec. 2010.

22

people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.34

Mark says at one point: There was this whole trip that we were really special. And our training was really hard, like this whole Spartan attitude.35 We see how Mark was influenced by the patriarchal ideology: My biggest question to myself all my life was how I would act under combat. That would be who I was as a man.36 But he learns that there is nothing glorious, heroic or noble about war and thus makes a reference to Hemingways Farewell to Arms: I read my Hemingway. You know The point is, you dont need to go through it. I would break both my sons legs before I let him go through it.37 Through Marks story we gradually find out about the atrocities that men from patriarchal society can do once there are no outer restraints of law and order that operate at home. We find out that Mark enjoyed the killing and the sense of power that it gave him. Unlike for Pavlo, for Mark violence felt better than sex. The madness of the soul that Conrad is writing about in The Heart of Darkness is demonstrated here as well. Through the centuries of repression of the creative instincts inside them and the centuries of poisonous pedagogy the patriarchal societys subjects soul goes mad, but it is kept under control by laws at home. Once such restraints are removed, we see the madness, as Mark explains:It was beautiful You were given all this power to work outside the law.38 This madness of the soul is not a product of innate forces that operate in men. It is the product of the distorted values of patriarchal society and the upbringing of children. Nadine, Marks lover, rightly observes:You know why they went crazy out there? Its that totally negative religion. It makes you fit to kill. Those commandmentsTake an infant and start him out on the whole world with THOU SHALT NOT and youre perpetually in a state of guilt or a state of revolt.39 Nadine is very critical of her own culture and she is not afraid to talk about it. She fails to be scandalized by Marks horrible stories of what happened in Vietnam because it is something that has been present in the American culture for a long time:Leading a
34 35

Art, Truth and Politics Emily Mann, Still Life, Testimonies; Four Plays ( New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1997) p.

227
36 37

Ibid., p. 220 Ibid. 38 Ibid., p. 237 39 Ibid., p. 240

23

whole group into group sex, vandalism, theft. Thats not uncommon in our culture.40 Nobody except her is ready to listen or talk about all these horrible things. Cheryl, Marks wife, knows about the atrocities, but she tries to forget everything. She knows that her husband, who abuses her, is responsible for the death of three innocent children, but tries not to think about it: If I thought about this too much Id go crazy. So I dont think about it much. Im not too good with the past.41 Marks parents know too, but they are ashamed. Mark desperately needs someone to talk to but his parents are not ready to bring up a bad subject and therefore they never ask him what happened, although deep down they know. They know how wrong it had been to raise their son to believe in all the clichs which sent him into slaughter for all the wrong reasons. The proof is in front of their eyes. While in war, Mark sent them the pictures of dead men; he even sent a bone of a man he had killed. He keeps the artifacts of war in the jars in his basement. His photographs bring to mind Eugene Dawn, a specialist for psychological warfare, from Coetzees Dusklands, who also carries with him the photographs depicting the torture of Vietnamese people by American soldiers. Both men and their families suffer terrible consequences because of their involvement in the war. Mark does not know how to deal with his anger and guilt. He killed three innocent children in Vietnam and he knows that this cannot be justified, My sonmy son wouldnt know the difference between a VC and a marine. The children were so little. I suppose I could find a rationalization. All that a person can do is try and find words to try and excuse me, but I know its the same damn thing as lining Jews up. Its no different than what Nazis did. Its the same thing.42 Marks words bring to mind Aime Cesaire who saw through the hypocrisy of Europe and of the USA too, whose barbarism according to him surpasses that of Western Europe. Cesaire was not afraid to put the blame for atrocities committed in the name of humanity where it belongs. In his Discourse on Colonialism he writes how Europeans are appalled by what Hitler did, failing to realize that they themselves were the accomplices of Nazism long before they became its victims and that they tolerated it while it was applied to non-European people. They never take the responsibility.
very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is
40 41

Ibid., p. 223 Ibid., p. 219 42 Ibid., p. 270

24

being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa.43

Dehumanizing the Other Dehumanizing the Self

Marks murder of innocent Vietnamese children is rationalized by the States and the same happens in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel where a story is told of the murder of an old man and a little child in Vietnam, because they tried to approach the soldiers. A soldier shoots them and instead of being punished he is praised. The most horrible crime is rationalized. It was said that the soldier was very smart to shoot because he knew Vietnamese were carrying invisible bombs under their clothes. There were obviously no bombs but the truth is not important in war. The soldiers are fed stories in which Vietnamese are demonized and thus the crimes of the Americans are justified. There is an example in Marks recollection: Everybody hated them. You couldnt trust em. The VC would send the kids in with a flag. I never saw this, I heard about it, the kid would come in asking for C-rations, try to be your friend, and theyd be maybe wired with explosives or something and the kidd blow up.44 The key words here are: I never saw this, I heard about it. From very early childhood, children of the patriarchal capitalist society are taught to believe in what they hear, rather than what they see for themselves. This kind of poisonous pedagogy is what Caryl Churchills play Seven Jewish Children shows. The play was written in response to the events in Gaza in 2008 and 2009 and shows the Israeli parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts discussing what their children should be told about the recent events in Jewish history, starting with the Holocaust and ending with the invasion of Gaza. There are references to some horrible events in the history of Israel such as: the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the dispute over water, the death of Rachel Corrie who was killed by a bulldozer while trying to protect a Palestinian home from demolition, the building of the West Bank barrier, the death of a Palestinian boy who was killed by soldiers in the crossfire, the dispute over water, Hamas rocket attacks and finally, the bombing of Gaza.

43 44

Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism, (New York: Monthly Preview Press, 2000) p. 3 Still Life, p. 243

25

As Churchill explains in stage directions, the characters in each of the seven scenes are different, as the time and the child are different. We see how, as the time passes, the poisonous pedagogy becomes more and more dangerous. The phrases Tell her, Dont tell her are repeated throughout the play, intercepted from time to time by dont frighten her. Actually, when discussing whether to tell the child about their own crimes, after each tell her or dont tell her usually follows dont tell her anything and after describing the Palestinian attacks they say dont frighten her. They do not teach children that there are alternatives to war: Dont tell her her cousin refused to serve in the army. Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army.45 Churchills play was attacked as being anti-Semitic. One sentence in particular that turned out to be the most controversial: tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? Tell her all I feel is happy its not her.46 The critics attacked Churchill saying that she demonized the Israeli by showing them as monsters who kill babies. Churchill had to defend the play: The character is not rejoicing in the murder of little children. He sees dead children on television and feels numb and defiant in his relief that his own child is safe. He believes that what has happened is justified as self-defense.47 The grown ups try to protect their children, but as the years pass the truths that are being withheld or revealed are more and more horrible. Those who should teach children right from wrong seem to be confused which is which. As their history gets bloodier, they convince themselves that the horrors that are committed are necessary for their safety. Dehumanizing the Other the Palestinians- makes all this easier: Tell her they dont understand anything except violence Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them.48 The dehumanization of the Other takes place in Churchills The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution, as well. French colonizers fool themselves that they are in Algeria to bring the natives enlightenment and to save them from themselves. This ideology of lies gives them an alibi for their continued occupation and aggression. It
45

Caryl

Churchill,

Seven

Jewish

Children,

Graphics8.nytimes.com.

<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/SevenJewishChildren.pdf> 11 Nov. 2011,

46 47

Ibid. Caryl Churchill Responds to Criticism of Seven Jewish Children. josephshahadi.com. 24 Feb. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2011. 48 Seven Jewish Children

26

goes so far that the natives in Algeria are described as innately violent; the scientific explanation for this is that they do not use the frontal lobes of their brain, which makes them incapable of morality. This is one of the innumerable examples of the misuse of science to justify European racism. This nonsense is reproduced in several medicine books as a fact, and this is enough for a subject of the patriarchal capitalist society, unused to critical thinking, to take it for granted. There is a young white doctor in Churchills play who supports this idea: DOCTOR: You must know the work of Doctor Carruthers of the World Health
Organization. He says that since the African doesnt use his frontal lobes it is just as if they have been removed so that the African is like lobotomized European. It accounts for the impulsive aggression, the laziness, the shallowness of emotional effect, the inability to grasp a whole concept - The African character.49

This strategy of dehumanizing the Other inevitably leads to the dehumanization of the colonizers themselves: The colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal. It is this result, this boomerang effect of colonization that I wanted to point out.50 Aime Cesaire gives numerous examples of European philosophers, priests, doctors and various humanists who published texts where they claimed that the indigenous people of the colonies were inferior and needed guidance and help by Europeans, who brought them progress, cured diseases and civilized them. Cesaire exposes all their hypocrisy:
Security? Culture? The rule of law? In the meantime, I look around and wherever there are colonizers and colonized face to face, I see force, brutality, cruelty, sadism, conflict, and, in a parody of education, the hasty manufacture of a few thousand subordinate functionaries, "boys," artisans, office clerks, and interpreters necessary for the smooth operation of business.Between colonizer and colonized there is room only for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, the police, taxation, theft, rape, compulsory crops, contempt, mistrust, arrogance, self-complacency, swinishness, brainless elites, degraded masses. No human contact, but relations of domination and submission which turn the colonizing man into a class-room monitor, an army sergeant, a prison guard, a slave driver, and the indigenous man into an instrument of production. My turn to state an equation: colonization = "thing-ification."51

What Europeans refuse to see is that the violence that the Algerians exhibit is something that they have learned from the colonizers. As Shylock would say, The villainy that you teach me, I will execute, and it will go hard but I will better the instruction. In his Wretched of the Earth in the chapter Concerning Violence, Frantz
49

Caryl Churchill, The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution. Short Plays ( London: Nick Hern, 1993) p.

119.
50 51

Discourse on Colonialism Ibid.

27

Fanon elaborates on this idea. He is very radical and he sees violence as the only way in which decolonization can be achieved. However, he notes how all this violence contributes to mental disorders:
We had no control over the fact that the psychiatric phenomena, the mental and behavioral disorders emerging from this war, have loomed so large among the perpetrators of pacification and the pacified population. Since 1954 we have drawn the attention of French and international psychiatrists in scientific works to the difficulty of curing a colonized subject correctly, in other words making him thoroughly fit into a social environment of a colonial type. Because it is a systematized negation of the other, a frenzied determination to deny the other any attribute of humanity, colonialism forces the colonized to constantly ask the question: Who am I in reality? 52

Inspired by the examples given in Fanons book Churchill shows revolutionaries in the psychiatric ward of the hospital whose psyche has been destroyed by the war. There is in Churchills play Patient A, a revolutionary native, who has killed many people by planting bombs in the places where French people go. He sees these violent acts as his way of contributing to decolonization, but that does not take away his sense of guilt. The natives who use violence often resort to the European technique of dehumanizing and demonizing the Other, in this case the settlers. But getting rid of ones conscience is not as easy. Patient A accounts of an event when he was about to plant a bomb in a French bar and bumped into a young Frenchmen who smiled and apologized. This sets off his conscience. He tries to rationalize: I knew it wasnt at all likely Id killed someone like that because the bar where I left the bomb was a well-known meeting place for the most reactionary- and in any case theres always a risk that innocent people will be killed and I do accept that now.53 His conscience is not put to sleep. He cannot sleep and cannot stop thinking about what he has done. He ultimately attempts suicide and ends up in the psychiatric ward together with two other native patients, who are also the victims of colonization. How a victim of the oppression becomes the oppressor is found in the character of Cordelia, the wife of the Gravediggers boy, in Bonds Lear. Cordelia is cruelly raped by the soldiers who kill her husband in front of her eyes. This traumatic

52

Frantz Fanon, Colonial War and Mental Disorders. The Wretched of the Earth ( New York: Grove Press) pp. 181-182. 53 The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution, p. 127

28

experience fills her with tremendous anger and she leads a rebellion against Bodice and Fontanelle. A rebellion against the oppressors should bring a change for the better. But most often the patriarchal ideology makes it difficult to escape false polarities, and the oppressed cannot see another alternative except turning into the oppressors. Instead of going beyond the assigned roles, they just switch them. Once in power, Cordelia becomes as cruel as those she fought against. She is the one who orders the executions of Fontanelle and Bodice. She is the one who continues the building of Lears wall at the cost of the lives of people building it. She is the one who has a captured soldier who wants to join her forces shot because he does not hate, To fight like us you must hate, we cant trust a man unless he hates.54 This line shows that even Cordelia in Bonds Lear could not escape being sucked into the ideology of the patriarchal society that suffocates the innate goodness of people and instead of teaching them love, teaches them hate and violence. The tragic mistake here is that justice is equated with revenge. Just like Cordelia, the soldier in Sarah Kanes Blasted turns into a monster because of the brutal murder of the person he loved. Instead of becoming a revolutionary after what he has suffered he is only driven by revenge, just like Bonds Cordelia and Shakespeares Titus Andronicus. This revenge does not bring a change, it just redistributes the roles. The victims become the oppressors. The soldiers descriptions of what he has seen and done in war are horrible beyond words, but the indifference towards the cruelties of war is equally disturbing. The truth is ignored by everyone else, and the soldier, just like Mark in Still Life, shows how easy it is for the emotionally deprived human being to commit horrible crimes once the constraints of the law at home are removed. What is more, those who send soldiers to war rationalize or conceal the crimes, thus enabling the people who have not experienced the horror to believe that it never happened. The soldier in Blasted says: At home Im clean. Like it never happened; Just like Mark, he cannot live with that. He implores Ian to tell the world what happened: Some journalist, thats your job Proving it happened. Im here, got no choice. But you. You should be telling people.55 Ians answer to the soldiers plea perfectly sums up the role of the media in contemporary society: No ones interested I write stories. Thats all. Stories. This
54 55

Lear, Act 2, Scene 3 Blasted, p. 57

29

isnt a story anyone wants to hear.56 John Pilger explains the role of the media in keeping the status quo:
Turn the pages of the major newspapers; look at the news on TV. Like border protection, we have mind protection. Theres a consensus on what we read, see and hear: on how we should define our politics and view the rest of the world. Invisible boundaries keep out facts and opinion that are unacceptable. This is actually a brilliant system, requiring no instructions, no self-censorship. Journalists know not what to do.57

Ian finds an excuse for himself by claiming that he does not cover foreign affairs. This excuse is ironic, since the war in the play is no longer just a foreign affair. It is happening on the streets outside the hotel and inside as well. By writing this play Sarah Kane does what Ian fails to do. She confronts the audience with the truth they do not want to see, that is, with what Bond calls the implacable; which is very brave. The play starts in a hotel room in Leeds where we see violence that happens behind the closed door. In the middle of the play a soldier breaks in, the room is destroyed by a mortar bomb and we learn that there is a civil war outside, reminiscent of the civil war in Bosnia. The audience is thus unexpectedly sucked into the nightmarish world of cruelty, sexual sadism and cannibalism. Kane shows the audience that no one is safe and that there are no foreign affairs when it comes to war, violence and injustice. The play was described as a disgusting feast of filth. All the negative criticism that followed the plays first production perfectly demonstrates what Ian is talking about in the play: This isnt a story anyone wants to hear. In fact, what outraged the critics and the audience most were not the horrible scenes of violence as they wanted to believe. It was Kanes violation of the unity of place, which managed to blast them out of their comfort zone. All this is not done only to shock the audience, but to make them think and react, as Sarah Kane explained: What I can do is put people through an intense experience. Maybe in a small way from that you can change things. Rabes, Manns, Churchills and Kanes plays show us how damaging for the human psyche war ideologies can be. David Rabe summarizes all their falsity by saying: You can do what you want about the war. But dont lie about it. Dont pretend that its good, or it becomes uglier than it is. Dont pretend its heroic. Dont pretend that everybody who goes there is a monster or a hero. Most of the kids didnt know

56 57

Ibid. Pilger, John. Breaking the Great Australian Silence. Enpassant.com.au. Nov. 2009. Web. 3 Jan 2012.

30

anything about what was going on.58 The playwrights mentioned here take the responsibility, avoided by the journalists such as Ian, to show the horrors and the hypocrisy behind war ideologies.

Peacetime Victims - Living in the Shadow of the Father

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.59

Sylvia Plaths poem, Daddy, is an angry poem whose persona, who has very many similarities with Sylvia Plath, tries to purge herself from the influence of her father who neglected her, failed to give her love and of whom she was afraid. In the poem we see the transition from seeing the father as perfect, a bag full of God, to utter disappointment in which daddy is compared to a Nazi, a devil and a vampire. Plaths father died when she was young and she did not have a chance to resolve her troubled relationship with him. In an attempt to reconnect with her father in death the persona attempts suicide at the age of twenty, just like Plath, but fails: But they pulled me out of the sack,/And they stuck me together with glue. She is aware that she can never fully recover. Her soul remains tortured by the love-hate relationship with her fathers image. The destructive influence of daddy is seen in Stephensons Five Kinds of Silence, Churchills The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution and Cloud Nine as well as in Manns Still Life. Many parallels can be drawn between Five Kinds of Silence and Sylvia Plaths poem Daddy. They both show us the victims of abuse and the terrible consequences that this abuse leaves on their psyche. While the abuse in the poem is emotional, the one in the play is physical and sexual as well. Perhaps the greatest similarity between Plaths poem and Stephensons play is found in examining the similarities between the

58

David Savran, In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights (New York: Theatre Communications Group ) p. 204
59

Sylvia Plath, Daddy. Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the Worlds Best Poems,

(New York: Pantheon Books, 2005), p. 164

31

persona in Daddy and Mary, Billys wife. They both depict not only the troubled fatherdaughter relationship, but also the troubled husband-wife relationship. Both women are neglected by their fathers. As the play develops we find out about Marys relationship with her father. After loosing her mother at the age of six, Mary tries to find comfort in her fathers love. But his alcoholism prevents him from giving her any attention. Just like Plaths persona, Mary is completely torn between love for her father and anger because she feels neglected and lonely: Every night I come home, nobody Its not his fault. Its not his fault, I wont have that, my dad loves me, and I love him so hard my chest hurts, but theres drink and a great sadness and Im so small I cant help.60 This frustration makes both women self-destructive. The persona in Daddy attempts suicide at the age of twenty. Feeling lonely and with no one to talk to, Mary starts cutting herself at an early age. That is the only thing that makes her feel real and alive and it makes her feel good. This self-destructive tendency is what attracts her to Billy. In both Five Kinds of Silence and Daddy we see a similar pattern of behavior repeated by abused women. Once they form their own families, in many cases the abused children repeat the pattern by either becoming the abusers, which happens to Billy or staying the victims, which happens to Mary and Plaths persona, since these are only models of behavior that they know of. Plaths persona finds a husband who resembles her father and who will neglect her in the same way: I made a model of you, / A man in black with a Meinkampf look/ And a love of the rack and the screw. / And I said I do. I do. Mary as well makes a tragic mistake by thinking that by repeating the pattern and being with the abuser she could change him and give a different outcome to her life. The masochism that both women exhibit is described by Sylvia Plath: Every woman adores a Fascist. Mary knows from the start that Billy is troubled and instead of running away she feels the need to save him:When you walked into that dance hall, you handed me a port and lemon, and I recognized you, as if Id known you all my life. I looked into your eyes and my heart welled up. Oh, I will save you, I will, I will save you.61 Both women try to find a way out. In an allegory in which she drives the stake through her fathers heart Plaths persona symbolically kills her husband as well.

60 61

Five Kinds of Silence, p. 107 Ibid., p. 118.

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Earlier in the poem, she describes them both as vampires sucking her blood. She seems more successful in her endeavor than Mary. Mary seems passive and reconciled to her and her daughters destiny and apparently, she does nothing to prevent her husband from sexually abusing their daughters. However, in the course of the play we find out that she did try to escape from Billy once and went to her father, but he failed to give her shelter and sent her back to her hell: You made your bed. Now lie in it. Marriage is a sacrament. Marriage is for life.62 We see here how a woman is trapped by her traditional role of a wife in the patriarchal society. She is treated as an object; a possession, and the owner has the right to do with her whatever he wants. After that, Billy broke her ribs and ensured that she would never try to escape again. Paralyzed by fear for her and her daughters lives Mary does not manage to do anything about the abuse in the family. Billy is murdered by his daughters, Janet and Susan in the first scene of the play: We had to kill him, Mum. Daddy is murdered in Plaths poem as well, even if only metaphorically: Daddy, I have had to kill you. /You died before I had time This liberation from the fathers shadow seems unconvincing since there is too much love and anger in the poem which indicates that the persona can never be through, although she claims otherwise. In the same way, Billy stays on the stage after he has been murdered and he continues to haunt his wife and daughters in their painful memories and dreams. At one point Janet says: You think hes gone now hes dead. But the dead dont go anywhere, they dance in your head, they come to you at night. The dead dont die, I know that now.63 When she decides to get free from the memory of her father, the persona in Sylvia Plaths poem is in her thirties, which is the age of Janet and Susan, as well, at the time when they decide to set themselves free by murdering their father. Although in their thirties, these women are prevented from fully developing into normal adults. The use of the word daddy and childish language in Plaths poem suggests that in relation to her father the persona cannot feel as an adult who has control over her life. It suggests her submissive and dependant position. The same can be said of Janet and Susan. Their case is even more disturbing. They are completely subjected to Billy. He starts sexually abusing them at the age of thirteen. Up to the point when they kill Billy, Janet and Susan have never had boyfriends. After all the abuse, however, it is doubtful
62 63

Ibid., p. 114. Ibid., p. 110

33

that they will ever be able to form normal relationships and find fulfillment as adult women. These women are burdened by an unjustified guilt because they feel that they should have done something about their mistreatment earlier. Plaths persona tries to reconnect with her father by attempting suicide. Janet and Susan are tormented because they did not manage to save themselves from the abuse even though they feel they had a chance. Janet looks at the family photographs where they are all smiling. The bruises under their clothes cannot be seen. She tries to find a sign in her eye, the message that should tell the observers that this is not real, but she only sees the smiles and that devastates her. Janet feels ashamed, but it is those in charge of mental health that should be ashamed. She suffers from clinical depression and visits psychiatrists, who ask her questions that she dares not answer for the fear that Billy would kill her sister, her mother and herself. It is not she who fails to give the sign; it is the psychiatrists who fail to perceive it. They keep asking questions instead of trying to read Janets silence. Even more horrible is Susans testimony. We see to what extent people in contemporary society are adjusted to injustice and isolated from each other. Susan remembers how their father sometimes kissed them in the street, not a fathers kiss, and there was no one to say anything; no one to protest. People were nearby while this happened; people they knew. They saw the sign that should have told them that something about this family was horribly wrong, but they kept quiet and their silence is what makes the play most disturbing: All that silence. Five kinds of silence. Each of ours and the world outside.64 Both the daughter in Daddy and daughters in Five Kinds of Silence feel trapped. Sylvia Plath uses the metaphor of the black shoe in which she has lived For thirty years, poor and white, to convey her sense of entrapment. Janet and Susan have spent all their lives trapped. All their actions are controlled by Billy. Ironically, it is once they are arrested after the murder of their father that they start to feel free for the first time in their lives:This is the first time weve been free in the whole of our lives, which is really funny when you think about it because a remand centre is actually a sort of prison, isnt it?65 Another character from contemporary Anglo-American drama who feels trapped is Francoise from Caryl Churchills The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution.
64 65

Ibid., p. 132. Ibid., 108.

34

Once again we see the emotional abuse of the patriarchal father figure who neglects his daughters need for love, affection and freedom, and instead imposes on her a kind of life that is unbearable. She rebels against this perfect life that her daddy protects by using horrible violence. As a French officer in Algeria he is responsible for the interrogation of the revolutionaries which involves torture. He brings his work home and Francoise is able to hear the screams at night. She is the only one in the family who perceives the horror of colonization. Unlike her mother she refuses to keep her eyes and her mouth shut. But there is no one to listen. In their denial her parents discard her claims as fancies of an insane person and expect her to acquiesce to the kind of life they impose on her:
this is a difficult time for everyone but Francoise has experienced none of it. Nothing at all. Her quiet life goes on as if it were somewhere else. She takes it all, her school, her dresses, her little bird in a cage, everything we do to protect that perfect life she is lucky enough to lead. And does she ever say thank you?66

In the words of Francoises father we see how denial operates and how submitting to the values of patriarchal society smothers any possibility of a loving father-child relationship. The father expects his daughters obedience and thankfulness. The only thing that matters is preserving the order which is in patriarchal society most often achieved through oppression. Francoise is able to perceive this hypocrisy of the peace and order that her father is trying to maintain and she cannot be thankful for it. She feels like her little bird in a cage. With her sensibility of a person who has not allowed for her innate feelings of love, compassion and conscience to be put to sleep, she is the one who suffers the most. What her father calls a perfect little life is a horrible nightmare from which she is unable to awaken. Just like daughters in Five Kinds of Silence, Francoise is not allowed to fully grow up and she rebels against that. She is in her teenage years and her parents separate her from her boyfriend because of his progressive ideas. They would do anything to protect her perfect little world in which she will always be their little girl unaware of the monstrosities that are happening in the world around her. Her mother who is in complete accord with the values of the patriarchal society at one point says: it just never occurred to Francoise to be anything I didnt want, it simply didnt arise. If I think of her at three or eight or thirteen its just the same, always pretty and smiling and liking to be with her mummy and daddy and what made us happy.67 The happiness
66 67

The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution, p. 103 Ibid., p. 102

35

bought at the expense of ruining other peoples freedom and happiness is something that Francoise cannot accept. Madness, thus, becomes her only defense against the horror she experiences. Its symptoms are meaningful. One of them is her naked appearance in a roomful of guests. She has cut to peaces the dress her mother wants her to wear, believing it to be a visible symbol of the false identity beneath which her true self was withering away.
Francoise: The dress looked very pretty but underneath I was rotting away. Bit by bit I was disappearing. The dress is walking about with no one inside it. I undo the buttons and put my hand in. Under the dress I cant find where I am. So when I take it off theres nobody there. They cant see Francoise because she was taken off upstairs and nobody came downstairs and into the room. My mother made that dress to kill me. It ate me away. That was a poison dress I put on.68

Interpreted literally this statement may seem as an outburst of a disturbed girl who in her schizophrenic fancy imagines that everyone wants to kill her and that the dress her mother made for her is poisonous. Such interpretation would rob the play of its significance. If we see the dress as a symbol of everything that is bad about the colonial society, then we start to see the bigger picture. This dress then becomes a burden for Francoise because by wearing it she is expected to assume the role of a good subject to the colonial society and to acquiesce to its wrong-doings. This would mean a soul-murder. When we think of it like that, Francoises statement that the dress was made to kill her does not seem delusional anymore. It is her mother that makes the poison dress literally, but also symbolically. She is the one who urges Francoise to assume the traditional role assigned to girls and women in the patriarchal society and discard the part of her personality that is rebellious, that asks questions and perceives the hypocrisy around her. With the knowledge and the insight she possesses she cannot become who she is expected to be and she is not allowed to stay true to herself. This pushes her into madness. Her referring to herself in the first and the third person here indicates her loss of the unified identity. This is what patriarchal society with its hypocrisy and violence does to its children. Churchill is even more radical in showing how the values of colonial society, promoted by an oppressive father, contribute to the family members identity crisis and confusion in her play Cloud Nine. This is seen not only in the dialogues, but also in the cast. In Act 1, set in Africa, a wife is played by a man; a son is played by a woman, a daughter by a dummy and a black servant by a white man. Very soon in the play we

68

Ibid., p. 146

36

learn that this cast is not at all illogical. Once again, there is an authoritarian father, this time a servant of the British Colonial Empire, who neglects his family members needs for love and tenderness and instead imposes on them a kind of life that will make them good servants to the Empire. We see how private loyalties and personal relationships are sacrificed for the sake of the Empire. Serving the Empire demands a great deal of personal repression which creates the problem of identity for the characters. Betty, the wife, is the image of what her husband wants her to be: I live for Clive. The whole aim of my life is to be what he looks for in a wife. I am a mans creation as you see, and what men want is what I want to be.69 And what Clive wants is to purge her from those parts of femininity of which he is afraid, which is seen from his words: Women can be treacherous and evil. They are darker and more dangerous than men.70 They are dangerous because the values that they stand for are not in accord with the demands of the patriarchal society. Clive manages to keep Bettys femininity under control, because she was raised not to question male authority. When it comes to his sons femininity, Clive does everything to suppress it. Edward, the son, who is played by a woman in Act 1, tries his best to be a good son. But we do not see a warm father-son relationship. Just like Francoises father, Clive only wants his childrens obedience. He instructs Edward: You should always respect and love me, Edward, not for myself, I may not deserve it, but as I respected and loved my own father, because he was my father. Through our father we love our Queen and our God, Edward.71 We see here how the word love is misused to serve the ideology of the patriarchal society. As Fromm put it: There is no word in our language which has been so much misused and prostituted as the word love.72 Instead of teaching love, Clive teaches his son obedience to the system in which the authority of the father, and thus the Queen and God, is never to be questioned. It does not matter if they do not deserve it. Edward keeps trying to express his feminine feeling, but he is always reminded that this is not appropriate for a boy. Deprived of love and affection that he should be getting from his parents, Edward finds it elsewhere- in his homosexual relationship with Harry, his fathers guest, who seduces the boy. Edwards sister, Victoria, is played by a dummy in Act 1. Just like daughters in Daddy, Five Kinds of Silence and The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution, Victoria
69 70

Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine. Plays. (London : Metheuen Ltd, 1985) p. 251. Ibid., p. 277. 71 Ibid., p. 276. 72 Erich Fromm, Selfishness and Self-Love (1939), Love, Sexuality, and Matriarch, p. 184.

37

is not allowed to develop her personality. She is completely controlled by others. She has no voice in Act 1, which makes her a perfect little daughter, the one that Francoises parents wanted but never got. The symbolism of a doll is very important in the play. The doll comes to stand for the oppressed femininity. Victoria, who is in Act one played by a doll, has a doll which is destroyed by the end of this act. The violence directed at the doll has its parallel in the invisible pedagogical violence that is used in order to suppress the values connected to the matriarchal principle, to use Fromms words. Maud, Victorias grandmother, who is in complete accord with the values of colonialist society, teaches Victoria to hit the doll, and the doll is ultimately cut open by the servant, Joshua. The hypocrisy and the oppression of the colonial system is not only seen in Clives relationship to his family members, but also in his relationship to his black servant, played by a white man. Clive is a self-pronounced father to the natives, and his servant, Joshua, who seems to be in complete accord with the values of colonialism, tells Clive: You are my father and mother.73 The oppression of the father is so successful in Joshuas case that he renounces not only his parents, but also his people and their myths and embraces the Biblical story. In spite of this, we see that the myth of the natives has not been forgotten and Joshua tells it to Edward, only to finish with: Of course its not true. Its a bad story. Adam and Eve is true. God made man white like him and gave him the woman who liked the snake and gave us all this trouble.74 It is of course, easier in the male dominated world to believe in this story, than in the story of the natives where great goddess is considered responsible for the creation of the world and where there was a balance between male and female. Just like the oppressed characters in other plays discussed in this chapter, the characters in Cloud Nine attempt to liberate themselves from their fathers shadow. At the end of Act 1, Joshua shoots Clive right in front of Edwards eyes. Edward does not say a word to prevent this. Act 2 takes place in England, a century later, but only twenty five years have passed for the characters. In this act we see the characters struggling to escape the fathers shadow and live their lives. Their liberation seems more successful than the ones in other plays, and yet it is not complete. Although things have changed, the change seems superficial and the effects of colonialism are still felt. The oppression
73 74

Cloud Nine, p.284. Ibid., p. 280

38

might not be as visible as before, but not because it is not there, but because it has become more sophisticated. Victoria now has her voice and she seems liberated, but her identity is still in crisis. She is married to Martin, who is just a subtler type of oppressor. He is trying to be modern and support womens emancipation, and yet he wants to assert his dominance. He wants the lead role in his wifes emancipation. In the character of Martin, Churchill shows how difficult and frightening it is for the patriarchal male to let go of the sense of control. Trying to find her own identity Victoria experiments with homosexuality. Damaged by the expectation of the oppressive father, Edward too is still on a quest for his identity. As a boy, he was forbidden to play with Victorias doll and thus express his maternal instinct. At one point he says that he wishes to be a woman. In his homosexual relationship he tries to play the role of a wife and he ultimately takes over the role of a mother, by taking care of Victorias and her partners children, thus becoming an opposite person of what Clive expected him to be. Betty, now played by a woman, seems to be more in touch with her feminine side in this act. She escapes her traditional role of a wife by divorcing Clive and getting a job. She is still influenced by colonial tradition but she somehow manages to reconcile the past with the present which is symbolically shown on the stage when Betty from Act1 and Betty from Act 2 embrace. The predicament of all these characters who have been the victims of abuse and oppression all their lives shows us the horrors of the world in which patriarchal values prevent them from having normal relationship with their fathers and partners. A partial liberation is possible for some of them, whereas for others it is too late.

Conclusion: Turning Looking into Seeing and Breaking the Silences about Violence
To be safe and sure and comfortable in this beautiful, brutalized, vandalized, depleted but continuously awe-inspiring world is in fact to turn away from it-to turn ones back in large part on life and the age-old succor that writers need: truth.75

Reading Bond, Churchill, Rabe, Mann, Stephenson and Kane does not make us comfortable. We are forced to see all the brutality of the so called civilized societies.

75

On Writing as Transgression

39

Williams writes about true naturalism, which seeks out those points in life where the great conflicts occur, which rejoices in seeing what cannot be seen every day.76 What makes these plays disturbing is precisely the fact that all that they depict is happening in the real world around us on daily basis, even if we refuse to see. Violence in Bonds Lear and Saved might be exaggerated because of its purpose; to jolt us into awareness. But there is nothing exaggerated in Stephensons Five Kinds of Silence. If the story of the family in Five Kinds of Silence is disturbing, there is a case in real life that is even more so. In 2008 police discovered a man in Austria who had kept his daughter captive in the basement for twenty four years, where he physically and sexually abused her and where she gave birth to seven children. For twenty four years nobody noticed what was going on. There might be Billys in our neighborhood and we would not notice. If we are unable to see what is happening in our own neighborhood, it is even less probable that we will see the horrors happening in the world, especially with the propaganda and manipulation that we are all exposed to through media. Keeping people in ignorance makes it possible for the world powers to commit horrible crimes in the name of peace. Tolerating violence and disguising it as peace leaves people unaware that war and peace are false polarities. Our world is closer to the world of 1984 than we want to admit. The propaganda used by the world powers to justify all their wars may be summarized in one sentence: War is Peace. (1984) As people have become more aware, propaganda had become more sophisticated,77 as John Pilger put it. In Australia, we are trained to respect this censorship by omission. An invasion is not an invasion if we do it. Terror is not terror if we do it. A crime is not a crime if we commit it. It didnt happen. Even while it was happening it didnt happen. It didnt matter. It was of no interest.78 Mark and Pavlo both go to war for the wrong reasons and for false ideals. This is the story of thousands of soldiers who went to Vietnam, or go to Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. This is the story of the colonialists in Churchills The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution and Cloud Nine. It is all the same. All these wars are waged for power and dominance and there is nothing glorious or noble about that. What makes these wars possible is the fact that people are accustomed to seeing other nations and religions as
76 77

Conclusion. Drama from Ibsen to Brech. Penguin, p. 383 Breaking the Great Australian Silence 78 Ibid.

40

different and distant. There are double standards as Pilger points out: In the arsenal of freedom we have two categories of victims. The innocent people killed in the Twin Towers were worthy victims. The innocent people killed by Nato bombers in Afghanistan are unworthy victims. Israelis are worthy. Palestinians are unworthy79 But, the distance between people is a fabrication that has to be torn down, as Naomi Wallace claims. Mann, Rabe, Bond and Churchill expose the ideologies of patriarchal society and the devastation that they bring to everyone. To see and accept that we are all being manipulated is a difficult process. As Amiri Baraka put it: Americans will hate the Revolutionary Theatre because it will be out to destroy them and whatever they believe is real.80 The response to Bonds Saved and Kanes Blasted demonstrates how true Barakas claim is. The outrage caused by Saved and Blasted only shows the hypocrisy of the British society. The theatre productions do not give the audience the opportunity to switch the channel in order to avoid the horrible scenes of violence. The fact that we do not see the horrors, however, does not mean that they are not there. Innocent children were dying in Vietnam, at the time when Saved premiered, and the monstrosities shown in Blasted were inspired by the war in Bosnia. Closing our eyes in front of monstrosities will not make them go away. It will only make us the silent accomplices. It is precisely this silence and its consequences that John Pilger talks about in his speech Breaking the Great Australian Silence, where he reminds people of the unmentionable episodes in Australian history: Tonight, I would like to talk about this silence: about how it affects our national life, the way we see the world, and the way we are manipulated by great power which speaks through an invisible government of propaganda that subdues and limits our political imagination and ensures we are always at war against our own first people and those seeking refuge, or in someone elses country. This is not only the condition of Australian people. Pilger goes further to talk about the ever present silence that can be broken only by the bravest, Harold Pinter being one of them. The dramatists mentioned in this work belong to this tradition. All the plays that have been discussed in this thesis are deep and touching. It is not comfortable to watch or read them. But it is this discomfort that makes the audience
79 80

Ibid. The Revolutionary Theatre

41

feel that there is something deeply wrong with their culture and makes them think outside their own protected world that makes them indifferent to the sufferings of others. In his essay Do We Still Love Life?, published in the collection of essays Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy Fromm wrote: Suffering is not the worst thing in lifeindifference is If we suffer, we might try to stop the causes of suffering. If we feel nothing, we are paralyzed. Thus far in human history, suffering has been the midwife of change.81 In order for the world to change we have to realize the important thing- that there is no us and them because:
When we look beyond appearances, we see the oppressors and the oppressed people, in all societies, ethnic groups, genders, social classes and casts; we see an unfair and cruel world. We have to create another world because it is possible.82

Boals message is optimistic and hopeful. We find this message in all the plays that have been discussed. A quote from Emily Manns Still Life may be used as an example of what these plays teach us. She manages to make the audience perceive Mark as their own conscience through Nadines words: Mark has become a conscience for me. Through him Ive come to understand the violence in myself and in him, and in all of us. And I think if we stay aware of that, hold on to that knowledge, maybe we can protect ourselves and come out on the other side.83 There is a hope in Nadines words of a different world. But to become able to create such a world we must go through a painful process. First, we need to turn our looking into seeing and see the truth, even if that makes us feel uncomfortable. The media can play a great role in this awakening, as Pilger points out: It was Edmund Burke who spoke of the press as a Fourth Estate. I propose a peoples Fifth Estate that monitors, deconstructs and counters the official news. In every news room, in every media college, teachers of journalism and journalists themselves need to be challenged about the part they play in the bloodshed, inequity and silence that is so often presented as normal.84 Once we see the truth, we must stay aware and hold on to that knowledge. And finally, we must break the silence and let the truth be heard and faced by the world

81 82

Erich Fromm, Do We Still Love Life (1967). Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy, p. 209. Augusto Boal, The 2009World Theatre Day International Message, Worldteatreday.org, 27 Mar. 2009. Web. 15 Dec. 2010. 83 Still Life, p. 271 84 Breaking the Great Australian Silence 84 Ibid.

42

because, as Martin Luther King said, Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.85

85

Martin Luther King. Beoynd Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. Americanrethoric.com. Web. 16 Dec. 2010

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References:

Baraka,

Amiri.

(1965)

The

Revolutionary

Theatre.

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text12/barakatheatr e.pdf [accessed 18/12/2010] Boal, Augusto, (2009) The 2009 World Theatre Day International Message http://wtd09.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/the-2009-world-

theatre-day-inernational-message/ [accessed 15/122010]. Bogoeva-Sedlar, Ljiljana. (2002) On Change Essays 1992-2002. Ni: Prosveta. Bond, Edward. (1978). Lear. Plays: Two. London: Metheuen. pp. 9102. Bond, Edward. (1977). Saved. Plays One. London: Metheun. pp. 7-133. Bond, Edward. (1982). Narrow Road to the Deep North, London: Dramatic Publishing Company. Cesaire, Aime (2000) Discourse on Colonialism, New York: Monthly Preview Press. Churchill, Caryl. (1985). Cloud Nine. Plays. London: Metheuen. pp. 246320. Churchill, Caryl. (1993) The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution. Short Plays. London: Nick Hern Churchill, Caryl. (2009). Seven Jewish Children.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/SevenJewishChildren.p df [accessed 11/11/2011]. Conrad, Joseph. (1997) Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin. Coetzee, John Maxwell. (1985) Dusklands. London: Penguin. Fanon, Frantz. (2010) The Wretched of the Earth

http://www.scribd.com/doc/38125267/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-ofthe-Earth [accessed 5/12/2010]

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Goddess Remembered. (1989) Film. Directed by Donna Read. Canada: NFB

Fromm, Erich. (1997) Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy; About Gender. New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation.

Heaney, Seamus. (1976). Hercules and Antaeus. North. New York: Oxford UP. pp. 53-54.

Kane, Sarah. (2001). Blasted. Complete Plays. London: Metheun. Mann, Emily. (1997). Still Life. Testimonies; Four Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group. pp. 213-274.

Petrovi, Lena. (2004) Literature, Culture, Identity: Introducing XX Century Literary Theory. Ni: Prosveta

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