VERBAL VIOLENCE IN THE PLAY KASPAR BY PETER HANDKE

This paper critically analyzes the play Kaspar by Peter Handke with an emphasis on verbal violence and examines the connection between language and social norms, rules and expected behavior of an individual. As structuralists such as Wittgenstein, Worf, and Barthes developed a theory of the deterministic power of language and the logical limits of the utterable, their approach will largely be a means of analysis. We conclude that Kaspar is displayed as a dramatic text which in the authentic way warns on the multilayered (sometimes malicious) meanings of language, and insists that the language should be critically examined in order to avoid manipulation and unconscious subordination to systems which impose constraints and rules and require their unconditional acceptance.Publishe