Paulina Last Speech

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“The past is never dead. It’s not even past” (William Faulkner). In Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman, Paulina’s past of imprisonment and sexual assault rush back after fifteen years of efforts to declare those memories dead. The audience sees how the past is an important factor in Paulina’s journey towards vengeance. Her judgement and morality is clouded by her past memories leaving her searching for justice in the future as she was unable to attain it in the past. The past lives within Paulina and serves as a guide in the way she acts. In order to kill the power the past holds over her, Paulina must confront it as her reality.
During the opening moments of the exposition, the negative effects of Paulina’s past life is revealed to the audience as she begins to anticipate the worst. Paulina’s paranoia show the existing effects of her past. As she awaits her husbands arrival, the sight of car lights and the sound of a car prompts her to react in this way: “she goes into a sideboard, takes out a gun” (3). These …show more content…

Having a member of a commission aimed to seek justice for those who were imprisoned and tortured living in her house, Gerardo struggles to understand the severity of the commissions unsuccessful attempts to provide justice for Paulina. Filled with rage as she tries to explain her thoughts of this commission to Gerardo, Paulina says, “‘The judges? The same judges who never intervened to save one life in seventeen years of dictatorship?...That judge?.. A judge? A judge?’”(10). The prominent use of interrogative sentences and the repetition of “judges” five times reveal a desperate quality of Paulina as she longs for closure for her past injustices. The emphasis on the judges shows Paulina’s frustration for lack of authoritative aid. Therefore, she must take the law into her own hands and seek justice for herself pertaining to her past

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