In 1836, German dramatist Georg Büchner began work on his revolutionary thriller, Woyzeck. Although the young playwright died before the play’s completion, the fragmented manuscript provides readers with an inclusive account of a young soldier’s tumultuous life. Friedrich Johann Franz Woyzeck, father to a bastard child with a cunning prostitute named Marie, leads a life of humiliating circumstance and is haunted by unassailable voices. Critic Maurice Benn celebrates Woyzeck, Büchner’s last play, as the most artistically complex and original of all his work (217).Woyzeck, the masochistic protagonist, seeks out suffering in the relationships he forms with others, and although these relationships cause him pain, he continues to cultivate them. Woyzeck’s tragedy is one brought about by excessive thought. The lowly soldier, consumed by impenetrable obsession with thoughts concerning his relationships with his friend Andres, the Captain, the Doctor, Marie, and consequently her lover, the Drum Major, drives himself into a catatonic frenzy. This consumption causes Woyzeck to lose control and commit murder.
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