In The Visit, Friedrich Dürrenmatt uses his character Claire Zachanassian as the driving force of the play. Claire 's revenge might seem unconventional, however, her principles are horrendously fair: she sentences punishments just for the crime. Dürrenmatt 's tragicomedy uses aspects of Greek tragedy such as the use Deus ex-machina in Claire 's character and uses this to show the complexity of a single character portraying both savior and punisher.
Claire is introduced in Act I with an abrupt entrance by pulling the energy brake on her arriving train. This action rattles the townspeople and catches them off guard, foreshadowing the unsettling impact of her visit. Dürrenmatt plays with the theatrical device deus ex machina in Claire 's character. Defined as "a person or thing that appears or is introduced into a situation suddenly and unexpectedly and provides an artificial or contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty."(The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). Claire 's character contrives artificial solutions herself to the problems of Güllen while at the same time creating them through manipulation and control over the town. "Mayor: Gentlemen, the billionairess is our only hope."(5) the fate of the town remained entirely on the generosity they hoped to
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Koby and Loby 's punishment are cruel and unconventional however they match their crime perfectly "Butler: What did you swear, Walter Perch and Jakob Duckling, before the court in Güllen? / The Pair: That we slept with Clara, that we slept with Clara." (33). The witnesses ' failure to testify truthfully equated to the punishment of blindness and castration for lying about what they saw and performed sexually. She is guided by the principle of retaliation when she punished the two false testifiers showing that Claire is actual more archaic by drawing on old methods of viewing