The Visit

“The country’s booming and Guellen has the Sunshine Foundry. But Guellen goes bankrupt.”

The Bailiff, who is in town to repossess whatever he can find to settle the town’s debts, expresses the anomaly of Guellen’s poor fortune, finding it hard to believe that the town is really too poor to pay when the rest of the country is thriving. But no one, even the Mayor, seems to have any idea why their perfectly good foundry is dark and the townspeople unemployed. According to the Mayor, none of the citizens pay taxes. This sets up the desperation of the town’s poverty.

“Clara loved justice. Most decidedly. Once when they took a beggar away she flung stones at the police.”

Ill’s memory of Claire foreshadows the real reason for her trip, which is pursuit of justice. Notable, Claire is dedicated to justice, not the rule of law, and justice is what she defines herself. In the case of the beggar, an injustice was likely occurring, but the policeman would have likely claimed that he was only doing his job within the rule of law. To Claire, justice supersedes the law, which she demonstrates is still what she believes.

“TICKET INSPECTOR: Madam. You pulled the Emergency Brake.

CLAIRE ZACHANASSIAN: I always pull the Emergency Brake.”

Claire forces the train to stop in Guellen, and the Ticket Inspector is irate that she has interrupted the train’s schedule. Until he realizes who she is, he insists that the train schedule is more important than anything, and the Emergency Brake should never be pulled, even in emergencies. This is absurd, because the trains exist to serve people, but even more absurd, the Ticket Inspector offers to keep the train waiting for Claire when her identity becomes apparent. The trains won’t stop for the entire town of Guellen, but for Claire, the express train will idle indefinitely, making anyone who is unfortunate enough to be on board wait until Claire is ready to leave.

“I’ve been correcting the Guellen schoolchildren’s Latin and Greek exercises for more than two decades, Mister Mayor, but let me tell you, Sir, I only learned what horror is one hour ago. That old lady in black robes getting off the train was a gruesome vision. Like one of the Fates; she made me think of an avenging Greek goddess. Her name shouldn’t be Claire; it should be Clotho. I could suspect her of spinning destiny’s webs herself.”

The Schoolmaster has no idea what Claire is going to ask the townspeople to do, but he is the first to recognize that she is powerful in a way that has nothing to do with money. Claire is a woman during a time when women’s rights in Switzerland are minimal. But Claire has always asserted herself, even as a girl throwing rocks or stealing potatoes to trade for a bed to have sex in instead of a barn. Seeing the undeniable power in her aging body, which no longer has the power of sexual appeal or the strength of youth, is grotesque to the Schoolmaster. He sees the contrast as supernatural and dangerous. He connects her to Clotho, one of the three Fates in Greek mythology whose job is to spin the threads of life. Although her purpose in Guellen turns out to be orchestrating the cutting of a life thread, she is spinning the lives of those who will live with the guilt of what they end up doing.

“That conspicuous consumption of husbands; she’s a second Laïs.”

Alluding to the Greeks again, the Schoolmaster compares Claire to Laïs, a wealthy sex worker for the nobility whose beauty was so renowned that men swarmed around her and waited at her door. When Laïs grows older, poetry represents her beauty as fading, and Laïs dedicates her mirror to Aphrodite because she can no longer stand looking at herself. Claire was once a beautiful sex worker who serviced rich men. She also has a swarm of lovers to choose from, and she marries one after the other, consuming and discarding them. The notion of “conspicuous consumption” is a critique of capitalism, suggesting that her husbands are commodities that she buys and discards.

“ILL: Clara, are you all artificial?

CLAIRE ZACHANASSIAN: Practically. My plane crashed in Afghanistan. I was the only one who crawled out of the wreckage. Even the crew died. I’m unkillable.”

Throughout the play, Claire is presented as inhuman, a near-goddess, or compared to Medea, a human woman with a superhuman rage and desire for vengeance. The play only names her arm and leg as prosthetics, but she claims to be mostly artificial. The artificiality that Ill finds horrifying is the mark of her extensive bodily trauma. She mentions a car crash, a plane wreck, and being “cut to bits by the surgeons’ knives” (39). Her first bodily trauma was giving birth to a child who was immediately taken away, and later learning that the child died. She has replaced the soft parts of her body with hardness. She may not be literally unkillable, but the evidence so far suggests that she is.

“Clara has such a golden sense of humour! I could die laughing at one of her jokes!”

The Doctor is disconcerted by Claire’s questions about death certificates and strangling, but Ill laughs and insists that they are jokes. The irony of using the expression “die laughing” is, of course, that her “jokes” aren’t jokes, and they will indeed end up killing him. This blunt foreshadowing is similar to the presence of the coffin and the hunting of the black panther. They are part of the play’s dark and absurdist humor.

“All my marriages are happy. But when I was a child I used to dream of a wedding in Guellen Cathedral. You should always fulfil your childhood dreams. It’ll be a grand ceremony.”

During the few days that Claire is in Guellen, she discards her seventh husband, and eighth husband, and marries her ninth husband before she leaves. Her marriages are happy because they exist to serve her, and she dissolves them when they don’t. The wedding that she dreamed of having in Guellen Cathedral was supposed to be with Ill. Possibly Ill got married there himself, but not to Claire. She is fulfilling that dream with a stand-in who is younger, richer, and more attractive than Ill. But she doesn’t love any of the stand-ins, all of whom she sends packing.

“I ask you to give three cheers for the prodigal daughter returned: Hip, Hip, Hip, Hurrah!”

The Mayor refers to Claire as the prodigal daughter, rewriting Claire’s history and relationship to the town. In the story of the prodigal son, a son asks his father to give him his inheritance instead of making him wait until the father dies. The son takes his inheritance and leaves home, going out into the world and wasting his resources on gambling, drinking, and sex. When he finally has nothing, the son returns home, and his father not only forgives him but welcomes him with the best party he can offer, as if his son has returned from the dead. The Mayor does not remember the circumstances of Claire’s leaving, but she didn’t leave by choice or with any sort of inheritance. If she is the wayward daughter for her pregnancy, their embracing of Ill is hypocritical. The “sins” she committed while she was gone were for the sake of survival, forced on her at 17 because Guellen turned her out. She hasn’t returned with nothing, and the town’s attempt to slaughter the fatted calf is only a show.

“Madam Zachanassian: you forget, this is Europe. You forget, we are not savages. In the name of all citizens of Guellen, I reject your offer; and I reject it in the name of humanity. We would rather have poverty than blood on our hands.”

The Mayor’s indignant response to Claire’s offer is full of irony. He uses Europe as evidence that the town is too civilized to give in to Claire’s conditions, but World War II was only a decade before. As Nazi Germany conquered their way through the continent, many previously civilized democracies fell to fascism. Otherwise regular people cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of self-preservation. Claire has created a desperate poverty and tempted the townspeople with wealth that they would never achieve if they worked the rest of their lives. The Mayor and townspeople easily say and cheer for the right thing, but their actions in the second act will immediately show that they are leaning toward temptation.

“Sheer extravagance. She ought to be ashamed, in front of the poor.”

The townspeople are watching Claire, who is sitting on the hotel balcony and smoking an expensive cigar. Throughout the second act, she is always there in the background, conspicuously consuming expensive things. The townspeople are starting to buy more expensive things themselves as Claire’s luxury makes them begin to salivate. If the town wanted to truly reject Claire’s offer, they would have sent her packing. But just like they won’t allow Ill to leave (but also won’t physically stop him), they won’t run Claire out of town. They’re keeping their options open, and considering that someone else could dirty their hands and kill Ill, and they would all profit.

“MAN TWO: You can get anything you want with money. (spits)

MAN ONE: Not from us! (Bangs fist on table)”

The men of Guellen are struggling with temptation and reassuring themselves that they can’t be bought. Yet they are all wearing new shoes—yellow, which is bright and conspicuous and symbolizes envy in Germany. They are giving in to temptation before Claire has paid anyone a cent. They are not killers, even killers for hire, but average people who believe that they are good. They create a cognitive dissonance in which they can spend blood money and believe that they are good as long as someone else carries out the killing. But by spending money they don’t have, they are increasing the town’s desperation and the likelihood that someone will go through with the murder.

“MAYOR: I’ve called up all men owning weapons. We’re not letting the children go to school.

ILL (suspiciously): Somewhat drastic measures.

MAYOR: It’s big game hunting.”

Ill has just been to see the Policeman, who gaslit him by claiming that he isn’t in danger, despite the million-pound price that Claire placed on his head in front of the entire town. The Policeman also vaguely threatened Ill with his gun before Ill gave up and left. Now the Mayor is also armed, which is tacitly threatening. Ill, who still believes that he is to be the next mayor, expects the Mayor to help him. Instead, the Mayor is joining in the hunt. He is bringing the town together to make a mutual kill. They are stirring up their bloodthirst for big game, and the temptation to simply pull the trigger and kill Ill will be great. The killing of the panther is overkill, just as the killing of Ill will be.

“You’re forgetting you’re in Guellen. A city of Humanist traditions. Goethe spent the night here. Brahms composed a quartet here. We owe allegiance to our lofty heritage.”

The Mayor’s oft-repeated claim about Guellen’s Humanism and the town’s past prestigious guests is accompanied this time with a hint of nationalism and even supremacy from the reference to a “lofty heritage.” Both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johannes Brahms were dead long before World War II. Their visits were to a version of the town that wasn’t desperate for money. The Mayor and the rest of the townspeople are practicing neutrality, as Switzerland did during the war, which means that they aren’t carrying out the killing, but they are allowing it to happen.

“MAYOR: God knows, the lady isn’t acting so unreasonably. You did bribe two kids to commit perjury and fling a young girl into the lower depths.

ILL: None the less, there were quite a few millions down in those lower depths, Mister Mayor.”

Ill doesn’t yet acknowledge the terrible cruelty of his crime and how he is responsible for damaging Claire. Ill ruined Claire’s life and married a girl with money, but he has ended up poor anyway. Claire has ended up with millions, which Ill suggests makes up in some way for what he did. But Claire doesn’t value money. She gives it away and spends it like water. Money only has worth to her insofar as it gives her back the power that Ill took away from her. If money can justify Ill’s criminal betrayal of Claire, it can also justify killing him.

“The Press always attend when I get married. They need me, and I need them.”

In the first act, when Claire got off the train, she decided to let the train leave without alerting her entourage of reporters because she didn’t need them yet. Her offer of wealth in exchange for murder is deliberately kept from the reporters by Claire as well as by the townspeople. The press follows Claire adoringly, and they create her public persona just as she continues to give them fodder for their articles to justify their careers. Claire’s marriages are just for show, which means there’s no point in getting married unless it’s an extravaganza for the reporters.

“You are in your own Hell. You are older than I am, and you think you know people, but in the end one only knows oneself. Because you betrayed a young girl for money, many years ago, do you believe the people will betray you now for money? You impute your own nature to others. All too naturally. The cause of our feat and our sin lies in our own hearts. Once you have acknowledged that, you will have conquered your torment and acquired a weapon whereby to master it.”

The Priest is offering the same empty reassurance as the Policeman and the Mayor, insisting that the threat is all in Ill’s head. Ill did something terrible once, so he expects others to act the same when presented with temptation. However, Ill does find peace when he contemplates and acknowledges his own act of cruelty, recognizing that Claire has a legitimate claim for justice. But he puts his fate in the hands of the townspeople, expecting them to vote selfishly for his death, and they do. Just as he gave in to the temptation of money and betrayed Claire, the townspeople will give in to temptation and kill him.

“Claire deserves a little happiness, after all she’s been through.”

Throughout the play, Mrs. Ill has been quietly enduring as her husband is occupied with wooing his former lover. When Claire greets her, she snidely comments that Mrs. Ill is thin, implying that her poverty is degrading her looks. Everyone is saying that Ill married her for money, and she emphatically corrects a reporter by saying that they married for love. Mrs. Ill seems to have empathy for Claire in a way that others don’t. She recognizes that Claire has been through a lot and wishes her happiness. Later, to a reporter, she says, “Money alone makes no one happy” (72). Mrs. Ill’s view of Claire is compassionate, and she is holding out hope that Claire will show mercy and give the money without requiring Ill’s death.

“Smart. Very smart you didn’t shoot your mouth. No one would believe a word a bastard like you said anyway.”

Some of the men from the town decide to take sentry duty to make sure Ill doesn’t speak to any of the reporters. In Act II, the same men were in Ill’s shop promising to stand by him, calling him “our Ill” (44). Then, at the end of the act, they threateningly crowd him at the train station, not touching him but tacitly intimidating while their words claim innocence. They ultimately leave him when he collapses. Now, they have progressed to bald aggression. Although they’ve received no new information, they’ve turned on Ill. With the temptation of the money, they’ve shifted their belief systems to rationalize the eventual killing and frame it as justice because, as another man says, “what [he] did to little Clara was a real worm’s trick” (75). Of course, “little Clara” is now 63, and his crime wouldn’t legally warrant the death penalty even that was an available punishment, but the townspeople are preparing to make their consciences clear.

“I made Clara what she is, and I made myself what I am, a failing shopkeeper with a bad name. What shall I do, Schoolmaster? Play innocent? It’s all my own work, the Eunuchs, the Butler, the coffin, the million. I can’t help myself and I can’t help any of you, any more.”

Throughout the play, Ill has been the opposite of a tragic hero, although he’s the protagonist of this tragicomedy. He’s not a king but a regular person and shopkeeper who was almost the mayor of a small bankrupt town. What he did to Claire 45 years ago was cruel, and certainly the reason she became what she is. Although he couldn’t have predicted Claire’s life, the most likely result of his treachery would have been Claire’s dying young in poverty and obscurity. His most heroic act is taking responsibility for the ramifications of his actions and going to his death to give her peace. But his death is framed as justice, and he isn’t praised for his sacrifice because that would require the townspeople to recognize that they killed a man for money.

“They will kill you. I’ve known it from the beginning, and you’ve known it too for a long time, even if no one else in Guellen wants to admit it. The temptation is too great and our poverty is too wretched. But I know something else. I shall take part in it. I can feel myself slowly becoming a murderer. My faith in humanity is powerless to stop it. And because I know all this, I have also become a sot. I too am scared, Ill, just as you have been scared. And finally I know that one day an old lady will come for us too, and then what happened to you will also happen to us, but soon, perhaps in a few hours, I shall have lost this knowledge.”

The Schoolmaster is presumably the most intelligent and educated man in the town. Unlike the other people of Guellen, he can’t convince himself that Ill’s death is deserved and ease his conscience. He voices what no one has been willing to admit: The townspeople will kill him, and they’ll do it for the money. The Schoolmaster has been wrestling with that knowledge and drinking too much to forget it, but he sees the desperation changing everyone, including himself, and making them capable of murder. Moreover, they have all done bad things and are doing something selfish and wrong by killing Ill, and such acts of cruelty always come back to haunt those who commit them. But people who participate in atrocities are usually regular people who give in to social pressure and brainwashing.

“But isn’t it your duty, as a man of honour, to draw your own conclusions and make an end of your life? If only out of public spirit, and your love for your native town. You’re well aware of our wretched privations, the misery here, and the hungry children…”

The Mayor brings Ill a gun and tries to convince Ill to kill himself and spare the town the guilt of killing. The townspeople have been working to convince themselves that Ill’s death would be an act of justice, but the Mayor is privately acknowledging that his death would be for money. He attempts to appeal to Ill’s sense of pity and civic pride, but in the end, the Mayor and all the townspeople will have to come to terms with killing Ill. Even if Ill had agreed to die by suicide, they would still be complicit in his death.

“God grant you find your judgment justified. You may kill me, I will not complain and I will not protest, nor will I defend myself. But I cannot spare you the task of the trial.”

Ill refuses to kill himself, because the only way that he can come to terms with his death is if it is an act of justice. As he hid in his bedroom and contemplated his situation, Ill found a way past his fear. But after everything that the town has put him through, buying things on credit from his own store with the promise of blood money, intimidating and tacit threats while claiming to be on his side, Ill can’t let them off the hook. They have to take responsibility and pass judgment on him. The Mayor insults Ill for his refusal, but Ill is steadfast.