tig’s student site
by Ariel Dorfman.
A site dedicated to Dorfman’s life and work is here.
There’s also an Ariel Dorfman Resource Page. Listen to a fragment from Schubert’s String Quartet #14 in D minor “Der Tod und das Mädchen”.
“How can the repressors and the repressed live in the same country, sit at the same table? How can a country, traumatised by fear be healed, if that same fear continues doing its silent work? And how do we get to the truth if we have got used to lying? Can we keep the past alive without becoming its prisoners? And can we forget that past without it happening again in the future? Is it legitimate to sacrifice the truth to ensure peace? And what are the consequences for the community if it represses the voices of the past? Is it possible for a people to seek justice and equality if they live under the constant threat of military intervention? Given all this, how can we avoid violence? And in what sense are we all responsible for the suffering of others, of the great errors, which led us to such a terrible confrontation? And maybe the greatest dilemma of all: how can we confront all these questions without destroying national consensus, the basis for any democratic stability?”
Ariel Dorfman, La Muerte y la Doncella, LOM Ediciones, 1997
Although Dorfman is Chilean and his play deals with the aftermath of the Pinochet dictatorship, other countries could just as well have been models for the play. On what happened on 9/11 in Chile, see this. Listen to the Nixon tapes if you find U.S. involvement hard to believe.
“Project Disappeared”: Chile - Argentina—Human Rights Watch
On Chile:
Chile and the United States—declassified documents on the coup
(remove 25 from the web address) and the extensive PBS site documents on Chile, as well as the Valech report on Wikipedia.
Films on the theme of South American dictatorships:
Missing on YouTube in a zillion parts
english a1
kiss of the spider woman
death and the maiden
by
Milan Kundera
Sparknotes for the novel.
Read a review by U.S. author Doctorow
Read about the Prague spring in this Wikipedia article.
by
Alexandr
Solzhenitsyn
Read the novel online.
Sparknotes for this novel, and a site with
essay questions and critical commentary
Background: visit the Gulag Museum and read Wikipedia’s entry on the Gulag and read biographical and autobiographical information.
by Manuel Puig
There are surprisingly few resources on the novel. Suzanne Jill Levine, translator of his novel and his biographer, offers a biographer’s view.
Wikipedia article on the 1942 film Cat People. The Enchanted Cottage still has admirers!
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Kiss of the spiderwoman
PART 1 WORKS
the unbearable lightness of being
need writing help?
Link to Part 4 works
Link to Part 2 works
Link to
Link to Part 3 works
Library resources