She is in utter despair and confides in the one person she can trust (her husband) a secret that has been haunting her to the core. During the following day and night she is summoned to confront that fear when the doctor she believes raped and tortured her years ago is sitting in her living room. Her husband who is a lawyer in charge of investigating the deaths of thousands under the previous reign, must defend the accused man because without the rule of law the evolution to democracy will be compromised. On the other hand, if his wife kills the doctor in an attempt of justice, the husband will not be able to help heal a wounded land. Some issues I noticed in Death of a Maiden that compared to Dilemma of a Ghost were marriage and the willingness to forgive. In Dilemma of a Ghost we looked at newlyweds who had to merge their senses of culture and overcome tradition and boundaries to try to make their marriage successful. One of the main issues being tackled in this play revolved around children; when is the right time to have them? Do they even want to have any? And most importantly: Who’s right is it to answer any of those questions? The power struggle between family dynamics and the clashing in core values creates a major divide between the love of …show more content…
This uneasy feeling of unrepentant guilt and formulated self-forgiveness lead to an unconvincing future. It’s crazy to think that sadly even with the numerous years that have passed since the birth of this play that the issues are still relevant. “I'm thrilled that Death and the Maiden has not aged over these 20 years, that it still moves people to tears, confronts them with a tragedy that has no clear solution that it speaks to our world today with the same passion it embodied yesterday. I'm thrilled that the relations between men and women that I explored, the intricacies of memory and madness, the aftermath of violence, the uncertainty of truth and narrative, continue to capture the imagination of so many. Thrilled, yes, but it is also sobering to realize that humanity has not managed to learn from the past, that torture has not been abolished, that justice is so rarely served, that censorship prevails, that the hopes of a democratic revolution can be gutted and distorted and warped”(Dorfman, The Guardian) . This work was truly a gift to its turbulent situation. The dictator was no longer in power but his influence, followers, and corrupt presence invaded every