MANIFESTATION OF THANATOS IN EDWARD BOND’S SAVED

Abstract

In the post-Freudian thought, the two driving forces of human beings are Eros and Thanatos. They are the pleasure principle and death drive, respectively. The derivative terminology of these two forces is originated in Greek mythology with Eros as the god of pleasure and Thanatos, on the other hand, as the personification of death. For a long time, the latter force was eliminated off-stage due to theatrical existential reasons. However, one of the few successful attempts to force Thanatos on-stage is detected in Edward Bond‘s Saved (1968). This paper approaches Bond‘s Saved (1968) aiming to show the poeticity in the Shklovskian defamiliarizing entries that forced the theatrical censorship into accepting the play despite the fact that the play promptly violated the censorship regulations. With these entries, the stage—once again—addresses human feelings while reshaping the Eros-oriented theatre. The result is residing tension in the audience after realizing the unexplored possibilities of the Thanatos-oriented stage and a consequent undoing of the prior anchorage of metaphor into a floating concept that involves the redefinition attempts into same-but-different perspective. The findings of the paper implicate that the employment of irregular techniques makes it possible to challenge people into the recognition of corruption by being charged with the responsibility of taking action concerning paratextual contexts through nondidactic plays.