The Visit and The Oresteia: Ethics of Responsibility
When Friedrich Durrenmatt wrote the play The Visit, he was doing so in response to what he saw as appalling neutrality on the part of the Swiss during World War II, neutrality that we now know was something more insidious. This powerful play expresses what happens in a community where responsibility is abdicated and scapegoating is employed, what happens when mercy falls to vengeance in the name of justice. It is a play designed to shock society into recognizing its own flaws and choosing a different course of action, a different way to be. Today I would like to briefly describe how this play and its connections help my students comprehend both the wider world (in place and time) and their own world, how literature can speak powerfully to correct social ills. Finally, I wish show how this play helps students recognize how communities are constructed and how each individual has a responsibility to serve the communities of which they are a part.
In Principia, our first-year introductory course to the liberal arts, we attempt to select texts that help students examine perennial human issues, texts that help students realize that their present and their future is not disconnected from the past. Durrenmatt's play raises three perennial issues that connect us historically to three specific contexts. The issues are: a human desire for justice, a human penchant for scapegoating, and the human conflict between selfish individuality and communal responsibility. The historical contexts are classical Greece, World War II Switzerland, and the 1950s success of capitalism.
Durrenmatt illustrates the human desire...
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...atic and structural contexts, leads students to reflect on their own values, their own roles as responsible members of communities. This play gets to core values and works as a contemporary classic; it deals with perennial human issues and provokes students to thoughtful action.
Works Cited
Aescyhlus. Oresteia. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Durrenmatt, Friedrich. The Visit. Trans. Patrick Bowles. New York: Grove, 1990.
Flaumenhaft, Mera J. The Civic Spectacle: Essays on Drama and Community. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994.
Lattimore, Richmond. "Introduction." Oresteia. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Loewy, Erich H. Freedom and Community: The Ethics of Interdependence. Albany: State University of New York, 1993.
From a boy with no father, to a civil rights activist, Jesse Louis Jackson fought for what he believed in and never gave up. Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina on October 8, 1941 to Noah Robinson, a cotton grader, and Helen Burns, a hairdresser. Jesse’s birth name is Jesse Louis Burns. On December 31, 1962, he was married to Jacqueline Lavinia (Brown) Jackson. His children include: Jacqueline (September 2, 1975); Yusef (September 26, 1970); Jonathan (January 7, 1966); Jesse, Jr. (March 11, 1965); and Santita (July 16, 1963). In 1964 he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology at the North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and soon after starts a revolution.
...nian architects. Frank Lloyd Wright, on the other hand is considered as one of the founders of modern architecture but what is certain is that they have both had a tremendous influence on the world of architecture today.
Lucas claims that the incident that sparked his motivation into the life of crime was witnessing his 12-year-old cousin's murder at the hands of the KKK, for apparently "reckless eyeballing" (looking at a Caucasian woman), in Greensboro, North Carolina.[6]. He drifted through a life of petty crime until one particular occasion when he engaged in a fight with a former employer and, on advice of his mother, fled to New York.[6] In Harlem he indulged in petty crime and pool hustling before he was taken under the wing of gangster Bumpy Johnson.[6] His connection to Bumpy has come under some doubt, however. Lucas claimed to have been Johnson's driver for 15 years, although Johnson spent just 5 years out of prison before his death in 1968. And according to Johnson's widow, much of the narrative that Lucas claims actually belonged to another young hustler named Zach Walker, who lived with Bumpy and his family and later betrayed him.[8]
Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 1998), 64.
3 In the Nature of Materials, 1887-1941: The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright (Da Capo Paperback) by Henry Russell Hitchcock Da Capo Press (June 1975)
Nightingale also created the International code of diseases that we still use today (Horsley, 2010). However, Nightingale had a strong passion for improving the nursing profession therefore, coming up with 13 canons that sensible and self explanatory. These 13 canons are able to be broken up into four major concepts Person, Environment, Health, and Nursing (Masters, 2015, p. 29). Nightingale believed nursed should always tend to the patient regardless if their original nurse is present and that the patient should be clean. She also believed that the patients environment shouldn’t be a place where disease can breed (Masters, 2015, p. 27). The patient should also be comfortable, fed, never left alone for long periods of time, and always in proper lighting. Nightingale believed that nursing was an art and a science that required a higher education (Masters, 2015, p. 28). She wanted the nurses to not only maintain this environment for the patients but to monitor the patient and report it (Masters, 2015, p. 27). Lastly, Nightingale believed that health was not only the absent of disease but when the patient is able to maintain a healthy life style. Nightingale improved many hospitals by designing them accordingly to her environmental
4.de Toqueville, Alexis. Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An American History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), 358.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty. Third Edition. 2. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 1999), 294-95.
Firstly let us consider conflict. In each act of the play, we see the overpowering desire to belong leading to a climax of conflict amongst the characters, which has the consequence of exclusion. Conflict is a successful literary technique, as it engages the audience and focuses our attention on the issue of conflict and exclusion, brought about by the characters’ desires to be accepted by their community.
benefit is prioritized when planning your tomorrow or even planning for your future. Living in tight, small communities can cause difficulty in making decisions where it might not benefit the community, but it benefits the individual. Freedom is perceived as a positive aspect of people’s lives. 39 percent of the world’s global population is not free today. This means that they do not have freedom of religion, speech, life. So, how in these communities that are not deemed as “Free” can people make individual choices. How does individual freedom change the community the people are in?
...le for them throughout the play, and it came to a head at the end of their lives. This play highlights the importance of identity, by showing what happens without it. Without your identity, you will pass through life with no purpose, until you stopped living.
In the spring of 1893 Wright decided to build his own house in Oak Park, Illinois. Taking six years to build, Wright was free to experiment with his objectives in residential architecture over the next twenty-year period. Designing and re-constructing his buildings was a continuous process. He always changed his designs. For twenty years this home served as an independent labatory for Wright. This too went under constant changes. Rooms were enlarged or added, ceilings heightened, the arrangement of the windows changed, and the entry route into the house was modified. Wright even allowed the growth of a willow tree to be uninterrupted by placing a hold in the roof of the studio.
Florence Nightingale, named after the city of Florence, was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820. She would pursue a career in nursing and later find herself studying data of the soldiers she so cringingly looking after. Born into the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale took the lead role amongst her and her colleges to improve the inhabitable hospitals all across Great Britten; reduce the death count by more than two-thirds. Her love for helping people didn’t go unnoticed and would continue to increase throughout her life. In 1860 she opened up the St. Tomas’ Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses before passing August 13, 1910 in London. Her willingness to care for her patients was never overlooked and wound establishing
...d of the play who goes against order, or their given role of society is deemed unnatural. This becomes problematic because of the constraints it places on the acceptable of any change in society. Forgiveness and love are not attainable within this worldview.