Dehumanization in a Play “The Visit” Essay Example

struggles with this inclination. After her failed paternity suit, Claire decides to be a prostitute in pursuit of a high profile male with a fortune. Clare’s conceit decrees that a beautiful woman like her can acquire wealth through satisfying male sexual desires without flinching. To her, wealth was more important than dignity when she first met the Armenian billionaire. Indeed, she asserted that in exchange of his wealth which she inherited, her beauty and sexual favors could be enough compensation. With this disgraceful habit, she fell into a degrading state which forced her to live beyond societal norms. As it were, her conduct led to her being branded as a corrupt woman. In that despicable behaviour, she learns a lesson about the sexual marketplace and she asserts that male sexual desires can be satisfied in exchange for wealth in regard to her relationship with the elderly Armenian. She finds this act as a way of manifesting her female power in favor of wealth. This way, Clare demeans herself as a woman represented as objectified function, a reputation that is in direct defiance with laid down societal norms.

The vilification of Esther made her see the err in her ways and sought change into a new persona altogether. This we learn from the third act as she confides in the doctor in the visit from the play. In addition, Clare confides to the school master that she owns all the properties in town which slates her noble person rather than a prostitute and deems herself a goddess. On the other hand, people do not seem to like her physical artificiality and this aspect of prostitution still trends

in the minds of the people even though Clare is very wealthy and powerful. She wants to help people but her reputation precedes her notion that constitutes to a conflict between capitalistic and humanist ideals. The relationship between power and dehumanization stems from the fact that there exists a relationship between the capitalist and human ideals where while we expect Claire to be human, her capitalistic tendencies cause her to dehumanize the other people in the play. As much as the world would like to believe that people should live on good ideals and the care about the wellbeing of others, Claire comes out as a vengeful persona. In her characterization, we find that some traits in humans are not as the world expects us to be. For instance, it is prudent to show that there is a good side in any person. However, evidence from the paper shows that perhaps there are other sources of power that will eventually influence the ideologies of a society skewed by monetary conquest over everything.

From the play, scales of justice seem to have loose ends that greatly need to be reconciled. Earlier when still young, III was able to bargain justice for himself at the expense of Clare by presenting false witnesses during the paternity suit that Clare had brought against him. This incidence pushes Clare into prostitution, a career she resented from the onset and which she was determined to seek revenge. Clare’s wealth enables her to demand the death of III failure to which she would not honor her offer for extraordinary monetary gift to the town. In this manner Clare dehumanizes III by staking his

life to death using her wealth and she finds death of III as an adequate equalizer with justice. This asserts that Clare’s wealth can buy justice to dehumanize others. Bobby the butler, a former judge in Gullen opted out of the profession to enter in to Clare’s personal service due to high salary package offered by Clare. This related with Clare’s conditional gift in town is a form of dehumanization which shows that the sacrifice and collective dignity is not a high price for Bobby to pay in return as can be seen from the play.

Rule of law is what the society subscribes to as decree. It lends order and shape to a culture by tending to the idea of justice. From the play, Claire’s arrival in town of Guellen alters the prescribed rule of law in the judicial process to gain her personal desire for vengeance. Basing on the first act, the audience learns from the Priest that there is no capital punishment in Switzerland. However Claire's conditional gift is able to sway the public to collectively play along with her decree. Clare understands that the people are in need and she capitalizes on that for her self-gains. In the play, Claire dehumanizes people because they did not have resources for development and so she expects them to play loyal and second fiddle to her whims and demands even though she at times was in violation of the law of the land.

The events in the play unfold in a cold, logical manner that leads to a predictable outcome. Just as Bobby the Butler asserts that he accepted to become Claire's employee because of the

high salary she offered him, the locals are also convinced that Claire's offer is, in fact, impossible to refuse. The townspeople are unable to preserve their dignity as they engage in powerful process of rationalization. Town people resent with the idea of killing but they justify their situation that by allowing a public figure like Ill to die will be a huge ransom for their futility in the city .This is dehumanizing the public and the jury as they stray out of the expected norms in resentment.

Reading from the play, Claire has a personal vendetta disguised in the name of justice against III. Clare and III used to be good lovers. Over time, however, Claire's love for Ill soured into an evil, monstrous spiff of hatred. Full of rage and anger, Claire demands her own version of justice inform of revenge. In the play, Durrenmatt reveals how deeply perverted her love has become with Claire's conditional gift to the town; ultimately, however, what she wishes is to take Ill away with her to an island in the Mediterranean Sea where they will be able to spend all eternity together. Her desire is romantic, but simultaneously monstrous. She is bitter that III made her lead a prostitute’s life and now that she was back in town, III should account for his mistake through a death penalty that she decrees.

Clare feels that III betrayed her as a lover and with that love wound she seeks vengeance against him to the extent of hunting Koby and Loby who were both of Ill’s false witnesses on the opposite ends of the earth. From reading the play, she makes Roby

and Toby, her employees, blind the two men and castrate them. Claire sentences Ill to an existence characterized by suffering and fear. Ultimately, the death that Claire selects for Ill is one inspired by the same material desires that drove her former lover to betray her in the first place. Here Clare dehumanizes 111 by subjecting him to suffering and fears and equally dehumanizes Koby and Lobby by ordering for their castration. Kobby and Robby too are subjected to dehumanization because they are forced to castrate human beings an act that was unacceptable to the society but due to financial motivation, they had to honor this task. Wealth has transformed Clare to animosity acts of dehumanization even though in the beginning of the play she embraced justice to the latter.

From the discussion in the play, Clare’s dehumanization domains have elaborated through prostitution, buying justice, rule of law and vengeance as justice. Through prostitution we find Clare dehumanizing herself because of rejection from III and this has since taken a toll over her which constitutes to her decreeing III’s death. Her status even after prostitution is questionable by the public so she has to assert her female superiority and dignity through her wealth by dehumanizing the people around her.

Another argument emanating from the play is the argument that perhaps Clare did not expect to have such wealth in her life based on her previous experiences. Further, it can be said that the aftermath of her acquisition of wealth has soured her success in to animosity and pride that is hell bent to afflict or subject people around her in fear. Clare confines herself in her own

exceptional world that sees her even lose respect for her husbands and employees by the way she calls them rhyming nicknames like animals an act that is downright dehumanizing. Through enormous acquisition of wealth Claire deems herself as a goddess and this puts her in a position that bend the laws of the town for her personal gains.

Works Cited

1. Durrenmatt Friedrich, The Visit, 1956, Gullen