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Wolfgang Borcherts play The Man Outside captures the self-hatred and angst of the German post-war zeitgeist. Surreal, filled with magical realism as much as German expressionism, The Man Outside symbolizes the difficulty in articulating the tremendous psychological struggles endured by Germans immediately after the Nazi crisis. In the play, Borchert does not moralize as much as he stimulates dialogue on the importance of facing the truth, even when the truth is too shameful and painful to face.
Suicide plays a major role in The Man Outside, the title of which captures Beckmanns total isolation from his countrymen and kin. Beckmann at times seems the only character in the play willing to feel the pain and sorrow, the guilt and horror felt after fighting on behalf of the Nazis consciously and willingly. One of the key moments of The Man Outside is when Beckmann is able to face is former commanding officer, the Colonel. In conversation with the Colonel and able to reflect on his service and speak his truth, Beckmann claims he came to give back the responsibility of killing eleven men (Borchert, p. vii). Beckman has been living with the burden of killing those men, and while he still does take responsibility for obeying his orders, he also wants to show the Colonel that the war atrocities are shared by all participants. Im bringing you back the responsibility. Have you completely...…He is the one who says Yes. The one who answers, leading audience to believe that the Other is the part of the self that is the enabler, the one that justifies all actions including those that are morally repugnant or which lead to death and destruction (Borchert, p. vii). Yet the Other is not the false self or the Ego. The Other is Who drives you on when youre tired, the slave driver, the secret, disturbing one, (Borchert, p. vii). The other serves both good and bad functions in the human psyche. Through both Beckmann and The Other, Borchert injects moral ambiguity into The Man Outside, which is why the play retains its timeless and universal…
Works Cited
Borchert, Wolfgang. The Man Outside. New Directions, 1949.
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