Blasted Essay Questions

What about the play is "in-yer-face"?

Sarah Kane stages many shocking moments that are not typical of stage plays. Firstly, the language in the play is often very explicit, filled with profanity and violence. Ian does not hold back from saying all the horrible things on his mind, and he often speaks in profane and bigoted ways. The Soldier does as well. Additionally, the action of the play is often shocking and unlike what audiences are accustomed to seeing onstage. Throughout the play we see rape, cannibalism, a grotesque blinding, and the penetration of a man's rectum with a gun. These are all shocking elements of the play, elements that serve to illustrate Kane's broader investigation of human violence, violation, and war.

Describe the Soldier.

The Soldier enters the hotel room and takes Ian captive before raping him and eating his eyes out of his head. The Soldier functions as a representation of the war being fought outside. In his brutality and remorselessness, he represents an extension of the state itself, and the violence that the state enforces. He has been hurt himself by the war, citing the murder of his girlfriend as a major reason he is so brutal, and so has become a hardened and violent man as a result. He also becomes a heightened version of Ian, in that he rapes and hurts Ian in ways that are even more brutal than the way Ian has treated Cate. He arrives in the play as a kind of reckoning, but also as a horrible representation of a warring impulse, the personification of violence itself.

What is the significance of Cate returning and feeding Ian at the end of the play?

Cate leaves Ian alone at the end of the play and we know that he will starve to death because he has no food. Cate has no reason to return to Ian as he has treated her so poorly, however, she does return and even feeds him. The final image is a primal image of survival, in which Cate has decided to return to the man who hurt her, having nowhere else to turn. She helps him survive, even though he does not want to. It is difficult to say with any authority what the final image means, or why Cate returns, but it is a striking image in that it represents a calm after a largely stormy play, a moment of almost parental care following so much violence and brutality.

What was the initial response to the play?

When Blasted premiered, it was met with derision by many critics and audiences, who saw its violence and shocking elements as gratuitous and unnecessary, a juvenile attempt to make people uncomfortable, hardly a justified extension of the themes of the play. Others came to Kane's defense, saying that the shocking elements of the play were essential to the thematic structure of the play, and comparing its brutality to classical dramas. Particularly other playwrights, such as Harold Pinter and Caryl Churchill, saw the value of Kane's work. Churchill even called it "rather a tender play."

What is Cate and Ian's relationship?

Cate and Ian are in a codependent and often emotionally abusive dynamic. While Cate does not especially want to be with Ian, he manipulates her into spending more time with him, guilting her when she does not want to have sex with him, and behaving tenderly when he needs more attention. Cate is much younger and more simple-minded than Ian, so often falls prey to his games. The beginning of the play is excruciating precisely because the audience must witness what an unhealthy and manipulative dynamic Ian and Cate have.