Scene 1: Open Countryside. The town in the distance.

In the play's opening scene, Woyzeck and his fellow military man, Andres, are cutting canes in the bushes. Throughout the scene, Woyzeck hallucinates and Andres sings folk songs. Woyzeck is convinced he hears sounds in the undergrowth. He points out a line on the grass and tells Andres it is the mark left by an executed prisoner's head when chopped off. Turning it into a sort of ghost story, he adds: "someone picked it up once, thought it was a hedgehog. Three days and three nights, and he was lying in his coffin." Woyzeck imagines that he hears a sound, and is convinced that it is the secretive Freemasons plotting in secret tunnels beneath them. Next he sees apocalyptic visions in the sky, exclaiming: "How bright it is! Flames are raging through the heavens and a distant roar like trumpets. It's getting nearer! Let's get away. Don't look back." He grabs Andres and pulls him into the bushes. Andres admits that he is scared and then hears a real sound: the military drums beating a tattoo in the distance. He tells Woyzeck that they must return to the town.

Scene 2: The town.

Marie is holding her child at the window and Margreth is at her respective window when the military tattoo marches by, led by the Drum-Major. Both women remark on how stalwart the Drum-Major is, and he salutes them. Seeing the "friendly sparkle in [Marie's] eye," Margreth teases her neighbor about being attracted to the Drum-Major. She teases Marie about having a child out of wedlock and insinuates that Marie wants to sleep with the Drum-Major, saying, "you can see clean through seven pairs of leather breeches!" Marie calls Margreth a "Bitch" and slams the window. Then she comforts her child by saying: "Don't fret, little 'un ... You're just a poor little tart's kid, and you makes your mum happy with your bastard face," and singing a folk song about having an illegitimate child. Woyzeck knocks at the window, but cannot come in because he must hurry to roll-call. Before leaving, he spouts hallucinatory thoughts to Marie's bewilderment: "Marie, it's happened again, lots of things. Is it not written: and behold, there rose up smoke from the land like smoke from a furnace? ... It followed right behind me as far as the town. Where's it going to end?" Then he rushes off. Marie exclaims, to herself and also perhaps to her child, how strange Woyzeck is acting. Specifically she notes: "He'll go beserk with all them thoughts of his." He did not even acknowledge his child when he stopped by. By the end of the scene it has fallen pitch black because the street lamp is not working. Marie remarks that it "gives [her] the shivers."

Scene 3: Stalls, lights, people.

Marie and Woyzeck are walking around a fair. The scene opens with a poor old man and child singing and dancing for money. Their song is pessimistic and nonchalant: "In this world shall none abide, / All of us we have to die, / And well we know it too!" Woyzeck pities them. Soon after, they come upon a Showman promoting his spectacle, which is implied to be a dancing monkey. He calls: "Consider the creature as God first made it; nothing, just nothing. Add civilization and see what you've got: walks upright, wears trousers and carries a cane." He goes on to claim: "It's all edication, he's got animal brains, or rather: brainy animality, he's not the pig-stupid sort like some people ... The monkey's already a soldier, though that's not saying much-the bottom-most species of human kind!" Woyzeck and Marie decide to go in to see the show. Just then the Sergeant and Drum-Major notice Marie and remark hungrily on her attractiveness. The former remarks on her beautiful black hair and eyes, and the latter boasts: "Spawn whole regiments of cavalry she could, breed drum-majors by the dozen!" They follow Marie (and Woyzeck) into the booth.

Scene 4: Inside the booth.

Inside the fair booth, Marie and Woyzeck watch the Showman's act with his special horse. The Showman calls the horse "a four-legged member of every known learned society and a professor at the university ... No pig-stupid individual, this one: he's a proper person. A 'uman he is, a 'uman being in animal form, but a beast, an animal all the same." As the Showman gives the horse cues, it responds by shaking its head and, at one point, "disgrac[ing] itself," after which the Showman lauds it as an example of "unspoilt nature." The Showman prepares to have the horse tell time and asks the audience for a watch, which the Sergeant produces. Marie exclaims: "Can't miss this!" and the Sergeant helps her into the front row.

Analysis

Scenes 1-4 introduce several of the play's major trends and themes. The first, obvious even from the list of dramatis personae, is that Buchner develops only two characters in Woyzeck, the title character, and Marie. The other characters serve as two-dimensional foils that emphasize Woyzeck's humanity against those less human, and his passion against those dispassionate. In fact, Buchner does not bother to give most of them names, listing them instead by titles such as: Drum-Major, Officer, and Doctor.

From the very first stage direction, Buchner makes us aware that the reader or viewer should prepare to remove himself from society in order to look upon and judge it. We begin in an open field, the space of fantasy and natural freedom, but with the town specifically in view. As Buchner elucidates throughout the play, madness is never secluded, but always connected to the society that feeds it.

Buchner also wastes no time in introducing the theme of violence, for which the play is most famous. Woyzeck hallucinates about execution, connecting him to the violent and macabre as well as to the historical Woyzeck, who was tried and executed for Marie's murder. Since Woyzeck was never finished, we will never know whether Buchner would have ended his play with the fictional Woyzeck's execution-if so, this initial reference to decapitation would cement the historical and fictional Woyzeck's stories even further. In further reference to violence, when the play opens, Woyzeck and Andres are cutting canes. Since this would not be a typical task for two soldiers, Buchner has clearly taken pains to make sure that Woyzeck is holding a knife, the weapon he uses to kill Marie, from his introduction to the audience. The Woyzeck we meet in Scene 1 is harmless although hallucinating, and uses his knife for the non-threatening purpose of cutting canes. Therefore we know that forces act upon him to turn him into a murderer. The activity of cutting canes also highlights Woyzeck's economic role; he is not, as he affirms in a later scene, a cane-carrying gentleman. The first scenes also firmly establish Woyzeck's mental instability. He is hallucinating and raving, and seems especially deranged next to Andres, who calls up images of the normal and casual with his folk songs in the manner of a Shakespearean fool.

Woyzeck's vision in the sky begins the Biblical undertones that carry throughout the play. According to critic John Reddick, the hallucination reflects the Biblical description of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Indeed, Woyzeck urges Andres 'not to look back' as Lot's wife made the mistake of doing. Ironically, of course, it is Woyzeck who should be warned about the effects of curiosity regarding others' wrongdoings. Woyzeck is convinced that the supernatural and frightening, in Biblical proportions, are following him at all times.

The initial meeting between Marie and the Drum-Major introduces the theme of sexuality. Both characters are sexualized immediately and continue to be for the remainder of the play. Marie, for example, holds her illegitimate child, a reminder of past sexual deviance, even as she flirts with the Drum-Major. In contrast, the character of the child is silent and innocent, unmarred by society in sharp contrast to his bawdy mother and mentally-unsound father. He represents the blank slate that each person is before society determines what kind of person he will become. Because of the child's illegitimacy and his parents' social class, not to mention their habits, he is doomed to become like them. Buchner develops this theme of human nature and free will in Scene 4, speaking largely through the character of the Showman. He uses a monkey to represent Woyzeck and all poor men, who are controlled by those more privileged than they when they would rather act on instinct. They may be monkeys, but they are not "pig-stupid" like the stunted, one-dimensional, pigheaded bourgeois exemplified by the characters of the Officer and Doctor. Buchner uses the horse as a symbol of the ideal human, noble because it is neither held back nor corrupted by society. Woyzeck is at once noble and pathetic for being so simple and instinctive. Marie is also compared to an animal, but by the Drum-Major. He views her in a purely animalistic manner, valuing her virility and the prospect of using her to "breed" over her beauty.

Scene 5:

Scene 5 opens with Marie examining a pair of gold earrings in a fragment of mirror while holding her child on her lap. Marie tells her child to shut his eyes tight lest the "bogeyman" get him. She remarks to herself on how she must admire her expensive gift in such a tawdry mirror because she is poor, but knows that she is just as good as an aristocratic lady. Woyzeck enters and Marie covers her ears so he will not see the earrings, but it is too late. When questioned, she claims that she found them. Woyzeck is skeptical at first, but does not think to much of the earrings. He looks fondly upon his sleeping child and gives Marie money. After he leaves, Marie scolds herself for her infidelity, saying: "I am a tart, a no-good tart. If I had a knife, I'd do meself in." But then she justifies her actions, saying that the whole world is immoral anyway.

Scene 6: The Officer, Woyzeck.

Woyzeck performs his daily task of shaving his Officer, who chats with him idly and mocks him. Woyzeck is eager to please even when the Officer tricks him by saying that the wind is (impossibly) "northerly-southerly"; when Woyzeck agrees, the Officer laughs at his ignorance and calls him "abysmally stupid." Then he proceeds to tell Woyzeck that he has no morals because he has a bastard child. Woyzeck defends himself, countering: "Morality don't get much of a look in when our sort gets made ... Us lot don't have a chance in this world or the next; if we ever got to heaven I reckon we'd have to help with the thunder." The officer continues to ridicule Woyzeck, who continues to explain that he is not particularly "moral" or "virtuous" because he is poor. He maintains: "...Us common folk, we don't have no virtue, all we got is our nature; but if I was a gent with an 'at and a watch and a nice smart coat and could talk all posh, I'd be virtuous alright." Since Woyzeck is done shaving him, the Officer dismisses him and admonishes him not to run down the street.

Scene 7:

Marie and the Drum-Major meet and flirt shamelessly. Her avoidance of his advances is only mocking, as she "goes right up to him" and lavishes him with compliments such as "I'm the proudest woman in the whole wide world." He returns: "And you're some woman. Christ almighty, we could breed little drum-majors like bloody rabbits-let's get started, eh?" As they embrace, about to consummate their attraction, the Drum-Major asks Marie: "Is that the devil in your eye?" and she responds: "Don't care if it is. What the hell."

Scene 8:

We find Woyzeck at one of his regular appointments with the Doctor, who is scolding him for relieving himself on the street outside because he needs to collect Woyzeck's urine for his experiment. He has Woyzeck on a strict diet of peas only. The Doctor begins to get angry at Woyzeck, but dismisses the emotion, saying it is "unscientific" and not worth his time to get angry at "a mere human." Woyzeck tells the Doctor about his hallucinations; not only is he seeing conflagrations in the sky and hearing voices, but he is convinced that there is secret meaning encoded in the patterns mushrooms make on the ground. His reports delight the Doctor, who calls the hallucinations "category two, such a beautiful example," and classifies Woyzeck as "obsessional but otherwise generally rational." Instead of giving him treatment, however, he gives him a monetary bonus.

Analysis

Marie's child offsets her corruption with his innocence. She is already under the Drum-Major's spell, admiring the earrings he gave her, whereas she commands her child: "Shut your eyes tight, go on, tighter, keep 'em like that and stay quiet or the bogeyman'll get yer." When Woyzeck arrives, he is very human and doting as opposed to the hurried Woyzeck from the first scenes who did not even stop to acknowledge his child. This is the first time we are made to truly sympathize with Woyzeck and see ourselves reflected in his simple love for Marie and his child.

On the surface, the short scene between Marie and the Drum-Major seems only to advance the action-that is, make the audience aware that they sleep together. However, in its brevity and directness, the scene emphasizes the two-dimensionality of the characters. Although Buchner develops the character of Marie in other scenes, in Scene 6 she is primitive and driven by her sex drive. In the same vein, the Drum-Major is concerned with his dual animalistic desires: to gratify his sexual urges and to produce offspring. We last encountered Marie and the Drum-Major together at the fair; now they are disgracing themselves as the horse disgraced itself, as though they are animals without self control. Only the mention of the devil and the characters' quick acknowledgement that they are doing something immoral remind us that they are humans operating in the realm of civilization.

In Scenes 7 and 8, Buchner juxtaposes simple, passionate, lower-class Woyzeck with pretentious, unfeeling examples of the middle class. The Officer and Doctor engage Woyzeck and pretend to be interested in his affairs, but couldn't care less about his well-being. Both of them see him as an animal; the Officer considers him to have no morals or virtue, and the Doctor, despite calling Woyzeck "human," uses him quite literally as a guinea pig. The Doctor is concerned with Woyzeck's symptoms only as they contribute to his own research and not to his patient's health. Instead of giving him treatment, he gives him money. This particular exchange crystallizes the relationship between economic status and mental state. Ironically, if Woyzeck did not need money so badly, he would not have to endure the Doctor's experiments and slowly go insane. Without his peas-only diet, he might react to Marie's infidelity just as angrily, but without the hallucinatory voice that commands him to kill her.

When the Doctor scolds Woyzeck, the latter defends his right to urinate on the street because he cannot hold it in 'when nature calls.' This connects him to Marie and the Drum-Major, who fail to control a different kind of animal urge at the same moment. Even though Woyzeck's failure to control his bladder connects him to the horse from the fair, it is in a humanizing manner. Unlike the Officer and Doctor, Woyzeck, despite his simplicity, is much more human than they. He acts on instinct because he has no choice or does not know better, whereas they are dehumanized by their abundance of choices and education. Their privileges make them both pretentious; beyond that, they make the Officer anxious and irresolute and the Doctor careless and inhumane. The Officer especially represents the lazy bourgeois, ignorant in his comfort as represented by his position, sitting in a chair while someone else shaves him. He mocks Woyzeck for having no morals or virtue, but has no sense of morality himself in ridiculing another man to his face. Furthermore he tells Woyzeck: "Our little talk has quite worn me out." Even mockery is too much exertion for the Officer, a two-dimensional representative of the lazy, overly-confident middle class.

Scene 9: Street.

The Officer pays a visit to the Doctor's office. He is anxious and distraught, telling the Doctor he is frightened of horses and begging him to stop rushing around the room. He reveals: "Doctor, I feel so melancholy, I've too much imagination, I can't help sobbing whenever I see my coat hanging on the wall, just hanging there." The Doctor mocks the Officer, telling him matter-of-factly that he is going to give himself a stroke, but if he is lucky it might paralyze only half his body, or just put him in a vegetative state. The possibility of just the Officer's tongue becoming paralyzed entices the Doctor, who in that case would love to perform "the most immortal experiments." At the end of their appointment, the two men tease one another, calling each other "numbskull" and "crackbrain."

Woyzeck runs by and the Officer orders him to stop, then tells him that Marie and the Drum-Major are having an affair and are together nearby at the very moment. Woyzeck is shocked and disbelieving, but soon understands that the Officer is telling him the truth. All the while, the Doctor observes Woyzeck's bodily responses to the news: "your pulse!-small, hard, erratic, irregular ... Facial muscles tense, rigid, occasional spasms, bearing tense, erect." As Woyzeck rushes off to catch Marie in the act, the Doctor follows after him, congratulating him on his symptoms and offering him a bonus. Left alone, the Officer muses on how entertaining he finds the Doctor and Woyzeck. Then he proclaims: "A good man's not courageous, only cowards are courageous. I only went to war to boost my love of life. How absurd to infer courage from that! Grotesque, quite grotesque!"

Scene 10:

A distraught Woyzeck confronts Marie about her affair with the Drum-Major, but she avoids his accusations. When he tells her he witnessed them together with his own eyes, she defies him "cockily," retorting: "And what if you did?"

Scene 11: The Professor's Courtyard.

Woyzeck is assisting a Professor in his lecture by holding a cat for him, but it keeps biting him. The Doctor takes the cat and extracts a tick from it. Then he directs the students' attention to Woyzeck, who is shaking. He explains to them: "This human specimen here, d'you see, for three months it has eaten nothing but peas, observe the effects, just feel how irregular the pulse is, here, and notice the eyes." The Doctor ignores Woyzecks complaint that "everything is going dark," instead ordering Woyzeck to wiggle his ears for the students, who examine him freely. When Woyzeck hesitates, the Doctor ridicules him to the students, saying: "There, gentlemen; what we have here is a throw-back to the ass, often brought about by excessive childhood exposure to women and a vulgar mother tongue." After that brief interlude he returns to objective observations, pointing out that the peas-only diet is making Woyzeck's hair fall out.

Scene 12: The guardroom.

Woyzeck walks in on Andres, who is singing in the guardroom. The weather is fine and the women have left some time ago to go dancing. Woyzeck tells Andres he is "on edge," and is clearly tormented, but Andres calls him "a bloody fool." After Woyzeck begins to ramble and say he must leave, Andres understands why he is so frantic and asks: "All because of her?!" Woyzeck responds simply: "I've got to get away, it's so hot around here."

Analysis

Scenes 9-12 continue Buchner's close examination of the effects of social status on human identity. Putting the Officer and Doctor together in Woyzeck's absence, especially with their mindless repartee, heightens our awareness that they, as a class, are separate from people like Woyzeck even though they are not necessarily smarter or more interesting. When the Officer is left alone, again we see how his privilege traps him into inaction. While the Doctor is unethical, he is at least interested enough to run after Woyzeck; the Officer stays behind and muses about events instead of being involved in them. On the other hand, Buchner suggests that it is better to be pretentiously uninvolved but harmless like the Officer than harmfully involved like the Doctor.

The scene with the students is crucial in developing Buchner's points about human instinct and social class. It is effectively a replaying of the fair scene, but with Woyzeck instead of the horse at the center of attention. The Doctor is like the Showman, 'entertaining' his audience of students with his animal specimen and spectacle, Woyzeck. He does not even refer to Woyzeck by his name, but calls him a "human specimen," and "it" instead of "he." Woyzeck is treated in a less human manner than the cat he holds. The Doctor gives the cat relief by removing the tick embedded in its skin. However, he gives Woyzeck no such relief. One can say that instead, the Doctor is the tick in Woyzeck's case, draining him on vitality and with it, sensibility.

Regarding the setting, it is interesting that Buchner should portray the university, the very place he himself made a living, as the hotbed of bourgeois ignorance and immorality. Just as the Drum-Major would like to spawn legions of little drum-majors, the Professor and Doctor are 'spawning' countless new professionals who will think of and treat others the way they do. Despite the fact that his physical and mental states are declining and he is treated like an experimental specimen, Woyzeck's emotions are the most human of any character Buchner presents. While the others in the room lack emotion-supposedly what makes us human-he has so much of it that it is beginning to destroy him and as we know, will eventually cause him to murder Marie.

From here on, Buchner continually heightens the contrast between Woyzeck and his foils in order to show how human his experience as a 'guinea pig' makes him. In addition to the Officer and Doctors' detachment, Andres no longer pays heed to or allows himself to be frightened by Woyzeck's hallucinations. He too divorces himself from any real sympathy towards Woyzeck. Even Marie becomes more of a caricature, the bawdy, unapologetic tart she only claims to be in the earlier scene with the mirror. Meanwhile, Woyzeck's range of emotion increases because he is now mad in both the psychological and emotional sense; crazy and angry. Even though he is losing his mind, his tormented heart makes him the most human of any character and we sympathize with him.

In Scene 12, Buchner begins to use heat to symbolize both passion and madness, which are intimately connected throughout the play. Woyzeck complains that the guardroom is too hot and leaves. Yet, it is not temperature that bothers him; rather it is the knowledge that Marie is 'hot under the collar' about the Drum-Major as well as the rise of his own passionate anger that are beginning to overwhelm him.

Scene 13: Inn.

Scene 13 takes us to a place of merriment, an inn, where young men are dancing and drinking. The 1st Journeyman and 2nd Journeyman exchange rowdy banter as they drink away their sorrows, such as: "I could fill a barrel to the brim with tears. Wish our snouts was bottles and we could pour 'em down each others' throats." Others sing folk songs in unison. Woyzeck looks into the window of the inn, where he sees Marie dancing with the Drum-Major. Woyzeck becomes furious, disbelieving that they would dance and grope at each other in "broad daylight" for all to see. He spouts angrily: "The bitch! The bitch is hot, so hot! Go on, go on! The bastard!" Then the 1st Journeyman stands on top of a table and preaches drunkenly about man's purpose. He says that life is imperfect by definition and "all is vanity, even money turns rotten in the end." His speech culminates with the irreverent summation: "In conclusion, dear brethren, let us piss on the cross that a Jew might die."

Scene 14: Open Field.

In this very short scene, Woyzeck is alone in an open field, which may be the same location as the first scene. He responds to a voice in his head telling him to stab Marie to death, repeating over and over: "Stab, stab the bitch dead."

Scene 15: Night.

Andres and Woyzeck share a bed in the barracks. The maniacal voice in Woyzeck's head keeps him awake, repeating over and over its command to murder Marie. We discover that now Woyzeck hears the walls speaking to him as well; his madness is becoming all-encompassing. Andres ignores him and goes back to sleep, leaving Woyzeck to rave alone in the silence.

Scene 16: Barrack Square.

The next day, Woyzeck and Andres are in the barrack square, where they talk about the Drum-Major. Andres reports the Drum-Major's hungry comments about Marie: "Real tasty bit of stuff! Talk about thighs! And how all over, so bloody hot!" Woyzeck departs rather abruptly, supposedly to fetch wine for the Officer. As he leaves, he tells a rather oblivious Andres: "But what a girl, Andres; real special, she was." Andres responds, simply: "Who was?" and a detached Woyzeck responds: "Nothing. See you."

Analysis

Although the play's fragmented structure rejects the traditional one of climax and denouement, Scenes 13-16 can be said to mark one major climactic change in the narrative. In the space of these few short scenes, Woyzeck transitions from pathetic instability to raging madness. His witnessing Marie's infidelity sets this intensification in motion, which is marked by the repetition of cyclicality associated with dancing and insanity. The circular motion of the dance translates from joy and excitement on Marie and the Drum-Major's part into the dizzying motions of madness in Woyzeck. It begins when he mockingly repeats Marie, urging, "Go on, go on!" and then transitions into the cycle of "Stab, stab the bitch dead" that continues until that very deed is done. Buchner uses circularity not only to connect Woyzeck's torment to Marie's deception, but to emphasize that Woyzeck is helplessly swept up in an obsessive current. He also suggests that there is a thrilling element to madness. Indeed, we call a horror movie-which often involves a psychopath if not other embodiments of psychosis-a thriller.

In these scenes, sex and madness are both closely associated with the sensation of heat. Marie is said to be "hot" when she is with the Drum-Major, which is indeed just how (as Andres reports) the Drum-Major describes her to the Sergeant. When Woyzeck hears this, he turns on a dime emotionally, which Buchner reflects in the stage direction, "with icy coldness." Suddenly Woyzeck's 'hot' passionate rage becomes coldly calculating as he premeditates the murder. It is with this switch from 'hot' to 'cold' that he crosses the threshold from madness as rage into madness as psychosis, deciding once and for all that he will kill Marie. Whereas heat indicated Woyzeck's intensely "human" passion, which his middle-class superiors lack, cold indicates an emotional detachment from the situation and his actions that allows him to become "inhuman." From then on he is steely even in the act of stabbing Marie. When he speaks to Andres at the end of Scene 16, he uses the past tense, "real special, she was," to indicate his resolution. In his mind, Marie is already 'dead to him' because of her blatant infidelity, and he determines to see to it that she is physically dead as well. The phrase, "real special, she was" is also chillingly casual, underlining the degree of Woyzeck's resolution as well as his detachment.

Scene 17: Inn.

Back at the inn, the Drum-Major parades about importantly, looking for a fight. He tells Woyzeck that he should drink because "Real men drink." When Woyzeck whistles to taunt him, the Drum-Major beats him up and then brags loudly: "The bleeder can whistle till he's blue in the face. Ha!" He continues to sing and drink while a shaken, exhausted Woyzeck says merely: "It's one thing after a-bloody-nother."

Scene 18:

Woyzeck goes to a Jew to purchase a pistol, but finds it is too expensive. Instead, he buys a knife. The Jew half-jokes: "Straight, that is, nice and straight. Going to slit your throat with it? Well, what you doing? You won't get one cheaper nowhere else, do yourself in real cheap, you can, but not for free. So what you doing? Get yourself a nice economical death." Woyzeck admires the knife, saying only: "Cut more than bread, that will," and buys it for two groschen without another word.

Scene 19:

Marie is distraught, flipping through a Bible with her child on her lap. She tries to pray and find phrases that will comfort her in her guilt. In particular, she clings to the story of an adultress brought before Jesus who was forgiven. She calls to the Idiot, Karl, who lies in the sun babbling about fairytales. Marie remarks that Woyzeck has not come by in two days and then she opens the window, saying; "it's getting so hot in here." She returns to the story of the adultress, who, after being forgiven, washed Jesus' feet with her tears and anointed them with ointment. She then strikes her chest and exclaims: "Dead, everything dead! Blessed Saviour, if only I could anoint your feet!"

Scene 20: Barracks.

Woyzeck rifles through his belongings while Andres, now immune to his ramblings, ignores him except to say he should be hospitalized for his "fever." Woyzeck finds a document with his personal statistics that states: "Friedrich Johann Franz Woyzeck, soldier, rifleman in the 2nd Regiment, 2nd Battalion, 4th Company, born Feast of the Annunciation, 20th July, my age today is 30 years, 7 months and 12 days." He then tells Andres in a seemingly disconnected statement: "When the coffin-maker finishes a coffin, no one knows who'll end up inside it."

Analysis

In Scenes 17-20, Buchner contrasts Woyzeck's cold, casual detachment with Marie's increasing sense of guilt. Woyzeck drops hints of his murder plan into his conversations with others. In the manner of Hamlet after he kills Polonius, his references to murder are somewhat cryptic to those around him, though unmistakable to the audience. At the same time, the previously "hot," highly sexualized Marie hides from the social contact in which she has been lavishing herself and turns to the Bible and her innocent child.

In the scheme of the play, when Marie is not acting adulterously, she is motherly, holding her child on her lap. Buchner creates in this one character not only a representation of the historical Marie, but a dichotomy of the Virgin Mary and the penitent Mary Magdalene. We must see her as simultaneously innocent and undeserving of murder and sinful with penitence to perform. Marie's connection to both Mary-archetypes universalizes her situation and makes us lend her sympathy. Although Marie was collectedly cocky when Woyzeck confronted her about her affair, when she leafs through her Bible she is almost frantically penitent. She beats her breast and wishes not only Christ, but Christ in person would forgive her. Ironically it is just at the moment when Marie begins to repent that Woyzeck has resolved to kill her.

In Scene 20, Buchner makes a direct connection between Woyzeck and Christ, a universal symbol of human suffering. According to John Reddick, Woyzeck's age as he reads it from the military document is the same as Christ's purported age at the time of his death, and his birthday is the Feast of the Annunciation, which marks Christ's conception. While it may seem sacrilegious for Buchner to compare a soon-to-be murderer with Christ, he does so in order to underscore his point about human nature and free will. It is not an innate madness, but rather economic circumstances and others' actions that transform the inherently good Woyzeck into a criminal. The Jew lightheartedly suggests that Woyzeck is planning an "economical death" by buying the knife instead of the expensive pistol. The joke on the Jew's part is a pun on Buchner's; the murder is not only "economical" in the sense that the knife is inexpensive, but in the sense that Woyzeck's insanity is rooted in his economic situation. Were he middle-class, he would never participate in the Doctor's experiment and be primed to go mad; he might also not lose Marie to the higher-ranking, more impressive Drum-Major. If we follow Buchner's logic in connecting Woyzeck with Christ, when Marie begs Christ for forgiveness, she is begging Woyzeck. However Marie's Christ in the form of Woyzeck is murderous instead of absolving; she is doomed. We pity Marie for this. Still, the comparison with Christ makes our sympathy lie ultimately with Woyzeck, beaten down by various forces of society and human contact to the point of derangement.

Scene 21:

Marie and a group of young girls are seated outside her house, sharing stories and songs. One girl sings about a lady with "stockings red, so very red," which one of the other girls judges to be scandalous. The girls argue over who should sing the next song, and Marie settles the dispute by asking Grandmother to tell a story. Grandmother relates a 'black fairy tale' about a poor orphan who is left all alone on Earth, who ventures to the sun and moon and finds that they are trash (a lump of rotten wood and a withered sunflower). He returns to Earth to find that it too is trash (an upturned crockpot), and so he sits down on it and cries forever more. Suddenly, Woyzeck arrives and startles Marie. He says: "Let's go, Marie. It's time." She responds, "Where to?" and he returns, "Who knows."

Scene 22:

Woyzeck leads Marie to an area outside the town where he frightens her with his insinuations that he will kill her, though she does not understand their meaning. Ironically, she says: "I've got to be off, there's dew in the air (I'll catch me death)" and Woyzeck attacks her verbally before stabbing her, with the accusation: "Are you cold, Marie? But you're warm all the same. How hot your lips are! Hot, hot, breath of a whore. -Even so I'd give heaven and earth to kiss them again. Funny: once you're stony cold you don't feel cold no more. You won't feel cold in the morning dew." Then he stabs her over and over until townspeople, having heard her cries, scare him off.

Scene 23: People approach.

Two people arrive near the scene of the murder. Hearing Woyzeck wading into the water coupled with Marie's groans, they assume someone is drowning. One of them wants to flee the eerie scene, pleading: "It's scary, all grey and vapours and wreaths of mist, and the humming of insects like cracked bells." But other decides they should investigate and they set off towards the scene of the murder.

Scene 24: The inn.

Woyzeck has fled the crime scene and come to the inn. He spouts some madness to Kathe, such as "Kathe, you'll be stone cold too one day," and "No, no shoes; you don't need shoes to go to hell." She simply sings and dances, ignoring the overtly murderous overtones of his statements. Suddenly she notices the blood on Woyzeck's hands and causes a scene. When Woyzeck tries to lie that he must have cut his right hand, the innkeeper points out that there is blood smeared on his right elbow as well, making the excuse impossible. Flustered, Woyzeck curses the crowd and yells guiltily: "D'you think I've just done someone in? A murderer, me? Why stare at me? Just look at yourselves! Get out of my way!" before running out the door.

Analysis

Buchner uses folk song and fairy tales to ground the tale of Woyzeck in the ordinary. Also, according to John Reddick, song has a "transfigurative effect" on the drama, raising it to a more archetypal level in addition to creating mood and underlining the scenes' content. When Scene 21 begins, the little girls argue over one song because it is dirty; "stockings red, so very red" insinuates that the woman in the song is a whore. Even when she is surrounded by children, the bastions of unblemished existence, Marie cannot escape the fact that she has been unfaithful.

If fairy tales frame people's universal outlook, then the Grandmother's 'black fairy tale' neatly outlines Buchner's pessimistic view on man's role in the universe. The orphan represents the basic human, alone and searching for meaning in the universe. Even though he is made to believe that life holds treasures for him, represented by the sun and moon, he finds on closer examination that life is worthless and he is helpless to change his situation. The orphan, like Woyzeck, is essentially good but beaten down by his experience; he cannot escape the pointless, unearned suffering and despair that is inevitable in life. Woyzeck shows up suddenly just as the Grandmother finishes telling the fairy tale, the timing connecting him even more explicitly to the orphan and foreshadowing more despair to come. The fairy tale can also be seen as a distillation of Buchner's own life experience. Once passionate about politics, Buchner retreated to the university and gave up hope for any sort of political revolution or achievement of a utopia. Like the orphan in the story, he was continually disappointed, finding his lofty aspirations (the orphan's sun, moon, and Earth) to be pathetic and useless. But no "crying orphan," Buchner poured his lamentations into his landmark dark, fatalistic brand of literature.

In Scene 22, the themes of heat and cold come to a crescendo. The scene is literally cold as it is a misty night; this is why Marie ironically tries to excuse herself by saying that she will "catch her death" of cold. The chilly scene reflects Woyzeck's cruelty as he taunts Marie and prepares to stab her to death. He goads her about how "hot" she has been, cheating on him with the Drum-Major. Then he plays off her worries about "catch[ing] her death" by assuring her that she will soon indeed be "cold" and dead. Even though we know Woyzeck must be in frenzied and forceful motion as he stabs Marie, he is far from the "hot" Woyzeck who was dizzied by the voice in his head. He leaves the metaphors of "hot" and "cold" as well as the circular phrases behind, saying simply: "Take that, and that! Can't you die? There! There! Still twitching! Not dead yet, not dead? Still twitching? ... Dead are you? Dead! Dead!"

Beyond the use of heat and cold, the scene of the murder is an atmospheric representation of Woyzeck's insanity. Even though Buchner is said to have precipitated literary movements that rejected Romanticism, the scene of Marie's murder is quite typically Romantic. It lies just on the edge of society, a space that often represents the threshold of insanity. It is dark and misty to represent the mind, and quiet save the sound of "the humming of insects like cracked bells," a strange, broken sound that mimics Woyzeck's ruinous state of mind. Woyzeck is more at home in this strange, secluded setting than amongst the people who oppress him. Therefore, it is odd that after the murder, he returns not only to the town, but to the inn--the very scene of Marie's infidelity and his pathetic fight with the Drum-Major. This return reminds us that no matter how hard he tries, man is helpless to escape societal pressures. But, man is still not 'at home' in society. Indeed, once the innkeeper confronts Woyzeck about the blood on his hands, he flees the social scene just as quickly as he arrived.

Scene 25:

Woyzeck returns to search for the knife, which could be used as evidence against him. He stumbles upon Marie's body and suddenly seems to soften, although he is not remorseful. He utters: "Quiet. Everything's quiet ... Why so pale, Marie? Why this red necklace around your neck? Who d'you earn the necklace from with all your sins? Black with it you were, black! I've made you go white again. Why does it hang so wild, your black, black hair?" Then he takes the knife and, hearing someone approaching, rushes off.

Scene 26:

Woyzeck is at a pond. He throws the knife into the water. Then, he considers that people might find it while swimming, so he wades in after it and throws it deeper. He wishes he had destroyed it in case it somehow is found. Then he proceeds to wash himself to remove all evidence of Marie's blood.

Scene 27:

One child calls to another, "Come on, Marie!" and tells her the news that a dead lady has been found "beyond the ditch, by the red cross." The second child responds: "Let's go and see it quick, or they'll take it away."

Scene 28:

The Idiot, Karl, holds Marie and Woyzeck's child on his lap and sings him a popular folk song, beginning with the lines: "He's fallen in the water, he's fallen in the water, look, he's fallen in the water." Woyzeck arrives and tries to hold his child, who wriggles away from him and screams. When he tries to give the child a toy soldier, the child again rejects him. Karl repeats the refrain, "He's fallen in the water," throughout the short scene, and stares "fixedly" at Woyzeck. Finally, Woyzeck sends Karl off with the child, saying: "Giddyup, horsie, giddyup!" This is the last we see or hear of Woyzeck.

Scene 29:

Presumably in a courtroom, a Policeman addresses Court officials, the Doctor, and a Judge. The Policeman proclaims: "A good murder, a proper murder, a lovely murder, as lovely a murder as anyone could wish, we've not had a murder like this for years."

Analysis

Buchner makes sure to mention that it is quiet at the scene of the murder when Woyzeck returns there. Presumably, this means that the controlling voice in his head has been relieved by the act of murdering Marie. Yet he has not snapped out of his mad state, as evidenced by his fascination instead of horror upon finding her body. His tone is lightheartedly macabre, calling the gash in her throat a present, a "necklace." He almost coos to her as he justifies having killed her. He says that she was "black" with sin, and he was right to drain the life (and blood) out of her to "[make her] go white again." From this point on, Woyzeck loses the power that he held briefly in wielding his strength over Marie. He is again vulnerable and spends the rest of the play fleeing from human contact and being distrusted in its presence, as by Kathe, the innkeeper, and his child.

Buchner might have expanded the scene between the two children had he finished Woyzeck. As it stands, the scene gives a quick outside view of the murder to remind us that although it is central to the play and to the lives of Woyzeck and Marie, it is just one small example of man's suffering. The children approach the murder with a sort of grotesque curiosity but without a hint of sadness or disgust, simply wanting to rush to the scene before Marie's body is taken away. Her death is not only senseless, but is 'no big deal' in society, where suffering and tragedy are simply man's lot. The first child is also named Marie to underscore the fact that the murder is far from an isolated incident. The story of suffering is universal and will be repeated as long as humans exist; therefore the moment the main character Marie dies, a young Marie emerges to take her place and implicitly suffer her fate. In fact, this young Marie is about to lose her innocence when she sees the older Marie's dead body and learns about tragedy and horror.

In Scenes 26 and 28, Buchner uses water to underscore that Woyzeck cannot escape his crime. Even though he wades deeper into the water to try to destroy the evidence, no matter what depth of water he throws the knife in, he himself is "in deep." Instead of baptizing him and absolving him of his crime, the water can only hide it with no guarantee that it will not resurface. The Idiot, Karl, echoes this when he keeps repeating, "He's fallen in the water." Woyzeck has indeed "fallen" prey to the pressures of society, which drove him mad and turned him from a simple barber, lover and father into a cold-blooded murderer. Even Woyzeck's child seems to sense that he is depraved, screaming and refusing to let his father hold him. However, Woyzeck return to his child's side reminds us that he is a good, loving person at heart. (In some versions of the play, we last see Woyzeck wading into the pond as if further into his pathetic situation.)

The play's last scene is strange and disembodied; we learn no more of the trial than the Policeman's short statement, and we do not know what he means when he calls the murder "proper" and "lovely." This is, of course, partially because the play was never finished; however it is a fitting end to a play that is so disjointed and strange. The Policeman seems satisfied with the murder. He may consider it "proper" and "lovely" because it is an act of revenge, or because the culprit's identity is so obvious. In any case, his comments underline the fact that man is naturally drawn to and admires the grotesque. Just as the children rush over to the murder scene to gander at Marie's body, the Policeman finds the murder somehow satisfying. Whereas the historical Woyzeck's story ended with a definite finality-his execution-Buchner's fictionalization ends uncertainly, highlighting his point that the only thing of which one can be sure is that life is dark and tragic.

• Biography of Georg Buchner
• About Woyzeck
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• Summary and Analysis of Scenes 1-4
• Summary and Analysis of Scenes 5-8
• Summary and Analysis of Scenes 9-12
• Summary and Analysis of Scenes 13-16
• Summary and Analysis of Scenes 17-20
• Summary and Analysis of Scenes 21-24
• Summary and Analysis of Scenes 25-29
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