Topic# 1: A commentator has remarked, " Clearly Buchner considered that while social revolution might help the Woyzeck's of the world, it could hardly save them". Is Buchner's vision of the world of Woyzeck essentially fatalistic, a dystopia from which there is no escape?
             Georg Buchner's classic play "Woyzeck", unfinished, yet ahead of its time, has only this past century achieved notoriety for its visionary script and modernity. Buchner, a young radical of his time, intended this work to act as a social protest against the oppression and conditions of the impoverished. The work shows its audience the extreme tragedies that befall those trapped in poverty, those who have lost all hope, and therefore become acquiescent to their environment, which in turn furthers their hardship. Despite the main characters' pleas for aid, and or spiritual intervention, they are trapped in their situations. Buchner offers no hope to them of any kind for redemption or salvation.
             Poverty is presented as a vicious cycle, one that destroys everything in its path. The obvious apocalyptic language and visions that Buchner employs in the play all stress the pessimism surrounding the characters, and the fatalistic and dystopic environment in which they are forced to survive. Woyzeck, the central protagonist, and his common law wife Marie, are left to the mercy of their society and manipulated by those around them. Characters like the Doctor, Captain, and Drum Major contribute to Woyzeck's downfall, and the subsequent murder of Marie: the Doctor treats Woyzeck like an animal and is completely unconnected to his reality, the Captain tries in vain to morally reform Woyzeck, a man whose hunger is first and foremost on his mind and not the condition of his morality, and finally, the Drum Major humiliates Woyzeck by seducing his wife, and later assaults him in front of his peers. All three men cannot possibly underst...