Peter Handke Critical Essay | Critical Essay by June Schlueter

Critical Essay by June Schlueter

SOURCE: “Politics and Poetry: Peter Handke's They Are Dying Out,” in Modern Drama, Vol. XXII, No. 4, January, 1981, pp. 339-45.

In the following essay, Schlueter examines the deep-seated themes of individual loss and alienation that underlie the political ideology of They Are Dying Out.

In 1974, a year after its publication, They Are Dying Out was produced at Zürich’s Theatre am Neumarkt and Berlin’s Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer. The Schaubühne, like Frankfurt’s Theater am Turm, favored politically involved plays with a leftist orientation,¹ and three years earlier it had shown considerable hesitation with respect to The Ride Across Lake Constance. There was no such hesitation with They Are Dying Out, however, which Horst Zankl (who directed both the Zürich and the Berlin productions) undertook without reservation, apparently feeling its anti-capitalistic message was clear. When the Yale Repertory Theatre produced They Are Dying Out in 1979, the play was billed...
(read more)