Woyzeck

I read this play for the second time today, since it was one of the required reads for my Advanced German Literature class (not sure if my knowledge of German lit is that advanced, yet here we are...) and I think this work deserves more than a star-rating and not even a comment.

People of his time didn't like Georg Büchner. He had uncomfortable thoughts and liked to share those uncomfortable thoughts with the world, with a writing style and an interest in the psychology of characters that is basi

I read this play for the second time today, since it was one of the required reads for my Advanced German Literature class (not sure if my knowledge of German lit is that advanced, yet here we are...) and I think this work deserves more than a star-rating and not even a comment.

People of his time didn't like Georg Büchner. He had uncomfortable thoughts and liked to share those uncomfortable thoughts with the world, with a writing style and an interest in the psychology of characters that is basically unprecedented in early 1800s German literature. He lived an extremely short life, and the book in question, Woyzeck, is not even a finished play (although it is easy to imagine the final outcome).

As I said, Büchner had a lot to say, and a lot of it didn't sit well with those who were in power. This play is a tragedy, a mockery, a critique of both the ruling class and those scientists who optimistically thought they could solve every issue with their numbers and rational explanations. It is indeed a Doctor (interestingly enough a nameless one, despite being a very relevant character to the story) that starts experimenting on the main character Woyzeck, and Woyzeck has no choice but to comply: he needs the money. He'll do whatever is asked of him in order to survive.
Whenever he looks at Woyzeck, the Doctor doesn't see a person: he sees a thing he can toy with. He calls him a "beast", an "interesting case", a "phenomenon", a "subject". Never a person. To the Doctor, there is nothing human about him. Nor does Woyzeck's captain see him as human either, constantly mocking him and treating him like a fool, because he's just so "tremendously stupid" and has "no morality or virtue".
And what does Woyzeck do? He does nothing. He goes along with them. He needs the job. He needs the money. He slowly starts to lose his humanity - and his sanity with it.
There's no hope for him. At some point, starting to show signs of delirium (which of course the Doctor starts to babble about in Latin, not even remotely caring about the man behind the aberratio mentalis), he looks up at the sky and wonders if he could maybe use it to hang a noose from it. To hang himself, ending his own life. That is, in my opinion, the exact moment when we can finally see all the cracks forming through his sanity. And how could have he stayed sane, when he is not even human in the eyes of others? How could have he stayed human in his own eyes? (There's no hope for him. He muses that, if he ever manages to end up in heaven, he won't be able to rest even there. He'll have to start making thunder for the higher-ups to use).