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Scene 5
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
At the captain’s place, the captain sits in a chair as Woyzeck shaves him. The captain orders Woyzeck to slow down—what will the captain do with the 10 minutes Woyzeck’s rushed job spares him? And besides, Woyzeck will surely live another 30 years: that’s a lot of time to fill. The captain stresses the importance of keeping busy. He admits that the thought of eternity troubles him.
The captain tells Woyzeck he seems worked up, which isn’t how a good man with a “clear conscience” would act. Urging Woyzeck to say something, he asks him what the weather is like. When Woyzeck replies that it’s windy, the captain mockingly asks him if it’s a “South-Northerly” wind. When Woyzeck agrees, the captain laughs at him and calls him stupid.
The captain’s question about the “South-Northerly” wind is nonsensical, intended only to confuse Woyzeck and set him up to be the butt of a joke. It’s clear from the captain’s interactions with Woyzeck that he does not respect him. By virtue of his higher social status alone, the captain believes he is superior to Woyzeck, intellectually and morally.
Themes
The captain says that while Woyzeck is “decent,” he lacks morals, remarking on Woyzeck’s illegitimate child. In response, Woyzeck says that God won’t think less of his child just because nobody blessed him: God loves all of his children. Woyzeck says you can’t judge poor people like him on their morals. The poor are “unblessed in this world and the next.” In fact, Woyzeck thinks that the poor may be tasked with “help[ing] out with the thunder” in Heaven.
Woyzeck’s remarks here display a keen awareness of the oppression he experiences daily. To be poor, he argues, is to be “unblessed in this world and the next,” emphasizing how suffering and hardship are fundamental aspects of his existence. He reasserts the unrelenting nature of this suffering and hardship with the wry joke about the poor “help[ing] out with the thunder” in Heaven: the poor, he suggests, cannot even catch a break via eternal salvation.
Themes
The captain laments his struggles to be virtuous. He gets worked up on rainy days when he looks out the window and sees “white stockings” walking down the streets. Woyzeck says that common people like him aren’t virtuous: instead, they “just follow [their] natures.” If he were rich, he’d be virtuous. The captain reaffirms that Woyzeck is a good man even if not virtuous. Then he dismisses Woyzeck, urging him to go slowly.
Woyzeck suggests that being virtuous is a privilege not extended to the poor. Whereas somebody of means, like the captain, can access all manner of creature comforts to distract themselves from acting on their unvirtuous, animal urges, this luxury is not available to common people like Woyzeck, and so they “just follow [their] animal natures.”
Themes
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