We just finished up our unit on Der Besuch der Alten Dame in my German class, and it was definitely a pretty sweet book. Quick summary of the plot: There's this town, Güllen, that is totally shot. Bankrupt, run-down, forgotten, pretty much gone straight to Hell. So this crazy old bitch shows up and promises to give the town a billion dollars. Yes, literally a billion dollars (I say dollars here, although the unit of currency is never actually given). The catch? The town has to present her with the dead body of her former lover, Alfred Ill. Chaos ensues.
The thing is, Der Besuch (which is actually a stageplay) resembles a black comedy more than anything else I can think of. It's not your typical black comedy, though, because I never actually found myself laughing out loud while reading it. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, the author, describes the show as a "tragic comedy," even though the storyline doesn't contain many of the hallmarks of a comedy at all. What it does contain are many features of a tragedy. For starters, the main character DIES at the end (sorry if you wanted to read it for yourself). Now, I've seen some black comedies in which the main character dies, but again, these are typically shows or movies where I am laughing almost continuously throughout. Not only does the main character die, but nobody else is really happy at all by the end. The townspeople get all the money they were promised, but they all kind of simultaneously realize that they gave up everything that made them human for comfort and wealth. For a town that is obsessed with "moral right" throughout the entire show, they are remarkably willing to set aside any semblance of morals when it promises to better their lives. Perhaps what is even more notable about the behavior of the townspeople is that, initially, they don't actively pursue the murder of Ill. What they do is completely alter their lifestyles, as if they are sure that they will soon come into a ton of money from some unstated source. They start buying things (every single character buys a new pair of shoes!) on credit that they could never normally afford. Not only that, they buy the stuff from Ill's own store! They basically adopt new lives, assuming that Ill will soon be dead! This could be seen as a sort of acceptance that Ill is essentially doomed to die, but there is a clear level of hostility in their actions that makes it seem more like a kind of passive aggression. In actuality, though, it doesn't matter which it is. The city is enabling the murder of this man in either case! The only character who stands up for Ill through most of the story eventually gets driven to alcoholism by his realization that he is powerless to stop the death of the man. Even Claire Zachanassian, the woman who offers the money in the first place, is largely unsatisfied with the end result. She leaves the city and returns to her home in Algeria, a billion dollars poorer and with little to show for but the dead body of her former lover, a man who had reformed long ago and had become one of the most respected members of the town. Of course, this may have been what motivated Claire's offer in the first place.
Once again, I find it is after midnight and I have class tomorrow. A quick summary of the big events of my weekend:
- MadHatters Formal, complete with Party Bus and dance party at UNO's
- No Hangover, which was nice
- 750 word German paper resembling what I talked about above, cranked out in 5 hours.
- CentSports balance holding at $1.16 after a relatively rough weekend
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