Violence and Surrogate Victims in Edward Bond’s Plays

Abstract

What is most striking about Edward Bond’s plays is his unconventional representation of visible violence and insanity on a Gothic scale. His Gothic  impulse finds its most intense manifestation in his treatment of varied forms of aggressivity. In other words, Bond’s refusal of the conventional limits and his critique of society is located primarily within a Gothic structuring of the elements of violence and madness. The main argument of the article is that Bond challenges all misleading rationalist and realist
interpretations, myths, and fallacies of violence and dismantles them through the concept of surrogate victims of aggression and irrationality.