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State Repression and Violence
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Accidental Death of an Anarchist, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Accidental Death of an Anarchist mostly shows the Maniac infiltrate the Milan police headquarters, make fools of the police officers, and uncover the truth about the anarchist’s death. But in its closing minutes, the play takes a dramatic turn. The Maniac reveals that he is not actually a “certified lunatic” with a knack for impersonating bishops, psychiatrists, and judges, but rather a left-wing activist who has been impersonating a lunatic in order to secretly tape-record the policemen’s admission of guilt. Before the officers can shoot him, he pulls out a bomb—ironically, one the police themselves built—and forces them to surrender. As the bomb’s timer counts down, he gets into an eccentric political debate with communist journalist Maria Feletti, who has come to interview the police officers and expose their lies in print. Feletti protests that the left can never build a more ethical society through unethical means like violence. But the Maniac rejects Feletti’s “reformist illusions,” arguing that public criticism only gives the government an opportunity to improve its repressive tactics, and political scandals only allow it to replace some corrupt bureaucrats with others. Instead of political reform, the Maniac wants a workers’ revolution. He argues that this may require violence, as repressive capitalist states crush peaceful resistors through threats, judicial persecution, and murder.
Fo closes the play by leaving the audience with this age-old choice between reform and revolution. The Maniac escapes before the bomb goes off, leaving Feletti with the keys to the policemen’s handcuffs and the dilemma of whether or not to free them. Fo cleverly shows the audience both endings. In one, Feletti leaves and the policemen die; in the other, she frees them, but then they lock her in their place, leaving her—and her investigation into their misconduct—to perish in the blast. The play ends with the Maniac returning to the stage and telling the audience, “Whichever way it goes, you see, you’ve got to decide.” While Fo may appear to side with the Maniac, this final line suggests that his true goal is not to tell people what to think, but rather to prompt a political debate and inspire his audiences to join the political struggle for a freer, more just society.
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Revolution vs. Reform ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Revolution vs. Reform appears in each scene of Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Revolution vs. Reform Quotes in Accidental Death of an Anarchist
Below you will find the important quotes in Accidental Death of an Anarchist related to the theme of Revolution vs. Reform.
Act 1, Scene 2
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PISSANI: We only behaved according to specific directives.
MANIAC: Exactly. “You must provoke the kind of atmosphere in which we can justifiably demand greater repressive powers.” That’s what they told you, right?
PISSANI: They were very persuasive.
SUPERINTENDENT: The subhuman filth are threatening to engulf our beloved country.
MANIAC: “Society is falling apart.”
SUPERINTENDENT: Action has to be taken. I appeal to your finer instincts, Kamerad.
MANIAC: “Strengthen the state.”
SUPERINTENDENT: Were we wrong?
MANIAC: “Crack down on hooligans, drop-outs, drunks addicts, squatters, demonstrators, infiltrate the union militants, round up activists, fatten up the files, polish your rubber bullets…”
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Act 2, Scene 1
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FELETTI: So! Notwithstanding knowing that to handle, let, alone make, bombs of this kind probably requires military skill, you completely ignored all other avenues of investigation and concentrated your entire effort on the most pathetic and disorganised group of anarchists in Italy.
SUPERINTENDENT: Pathetic they may look, but their disorganisation is only a cunning façade.
FELETTI: And what do we find behind this cunning façade. Superintendent? I’ll tell you. A group of ten, one of whom was a spy employed by this office, two detectives from the crime squad, and a fourth member turns out to be a notorious fascist well known to everyone except this feeble bunch of anarchists. How many more government employees have you got scattered amongst the far left?
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MANIAC: You are a journalist Miss Feletti, so you want to use your pen to lance the public boil, but what will you achieve? A huge scandal, a heap of big nobs compromised head of the police force shunted off into retirement.
FELETTI: Not a bad day’s work.
MANIAC: It’s just another chance for the pristine beauticians of the Communist Party to point out another wart on the body politic and pose themselves as the party of honesty But the STATE, Miss Feletti, the State remains, still presenting corruption as the exception to the rule, when the system the State was designed to protect is corruption itself. Corruption is the rule.
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MANIAC: Why not ask yourself Miss Feletti, what sort of democracy requires the services of dogs such as these? I’ll tell you. Bourgeois democracy which wears a thin skin of human rights to keep out the cold, but when things hot up, when the rotten plots of the ruling class fail to silence our demands, when they have put half the population on the dole queue and squeezed the other half dry with wage on cuts the to keep themselves in profit, when they have run out of promises and you reformists have failed to keep the masses in order for them; well then they shed their skins and dump you, as they did in Chile; and set their wildest dogs loose on us all.
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MANIAC: Oh Dio! Whichever way it goes, you see, you’ve got to decide. Goodnight.
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