The Anti-Hero on Buchner to Koltes: A Comparative Look at Woyzeck and Roberto Zucco

Abstract

Woyzeck, written in 1836, is an unfinished play by Georg Buchner, the plot of which is based on the real-life story of Johann Christian Woyzeck, who killed the woman he lived with. His case occupied the German press for a long period. After an 18-month trial, he suffered a public beheading in 1824. Roberto Zucco, written in 1988, was the last play by Bernard-Marie Koltes. Its plot was inspired by the real-life story of Roberto Succo , who stabbed his mother and strangled his father to death. Succo committed serial murders in Italy and France in the 1980s; he occupied the French press, particularly in 1986, and finally committed suicide in 1988 by suffocating himself with a plastic bag. This study examines Woyzeck and Roberto Zucco, written approximately 150 years apart, by considering their structural parallels and how the anti-hero phenomenon altered depending on the zeitgeist. Based on concepts of classical Greek tragedy, including hamartia, anagnorisis, peripeteia, and pathos, this paper considers the tragic hero and anti-hero prototypes in these plays. The author also reviews the qualities of the tragic hero figure diminished or preserved through the reversal process of presenting the anti-hero. As a side theme of this study, the paper elaborates on the transition process from anti-hero to anti-character, particularly in modernist drama. Finally, the article contemplates whether the rules of classical tragedy work in this context and examines the tragic essence in the two plays by considering the anti-hero in the light of the figure of the scapegoat-pharmakos in Greek.