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Scene 23
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Woyzeck, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Human Nature
Secrecy, Paranoia, and Betrayal
Poverty and Suffering
Character vs. Circumstance
Summary
Analysis
Woyzeck is alone at the pond. He looks for his knife, knowing that it will give him away, but he can’t find it. Marie’s body is still there, and he remarks on how still and pale she is. Finally, he finds his knife and throws it into the pond. Unsatisfied with how near the surface it is, he wades into the water and throws it farther out. Even if anyone were to find it, would they be able to recognize it once it rusts? He wishes he’d just destroyed it. He thinks he sees more bloodstains on his body and wades out farther to wash himself.
In the play’s final scene, Woyzeck oscillates between rationality (he has the foresight to realize the importance of hiding the knife) and irrationality (he sees bloodstains on his body which may or may not exist, and his fear that others may find the knife borders on paranoia). Notably, his fixation on the bloodstains may be a nod to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which Lady Macbeth hallucinates blood she cannot wash from her hands following Duncan’s murder. In a sense, then, Woyzeck’s paranoia about the blood suggests his guilt and remorse over Marie’s murder. Once more, the play highlights Woyzeck’s conflicted emotions and intense paranoia in order to emphasize his compromised mental state. Undeniably he is guilty of murder, but it’s also critical to consider how the dehumanizing treatment he was subjected to up to that point primed him to commit such a brutal, inhuman act. Woyzeck’s higher-ups and employers have ridiculed him as immoral and animalistic, and he finally breaks and lashes out in a fit of immoral, animal rage.
Themes
