At some point, the mother comes up with the worst of all arguments: “Daddy and mommy survived the war for you. Because of us, you’ve put all the wars behind you.” yes thank you too What this mother is figuring out is first degree emotional blackmail and doubly wrong. After all, why should the war that traumatized the parents so much be the last and inevitably spare the daughter from another, so to speak, her own war? In addition, the daughter is by no means behind this war, which she herself did not experience directly. On the contrary, it is extremely present in the mother’s stories and complaints and anxieties.
dead in life is a radio play by the author Mona Winter, who herself also directed, about three women whose lives are characterized by war as a defining external and thus also internal event. The mother suffered through the Second World War as a child, while her daughter is shaped by her mother’s suffering. And then there is another woman who escaped the Syrian civil war. In her piece, Winter mixes very poetic considerations with the documentary statements of this Syrian. Weaves philosophy and mythology with the reality of life.
Also a lament that is not free from self-accusations
On a central narrative level, it is about the role of women in war, not thought of as practical, but ideal. The question of whether women, who tend not to be suspicious of war heroism, are more likely to let out cassandra calls or siren songs. So whether they are voices of reason whose warnings of the misery and horror of war all too often go unheeded. Or whether they are not rather beguilers and conjurers of evil.
To that extent dead in life a lament not free from self-accusations and a few heretical thoughts. In essence, however, the radio play expresses the impotence of women too and the futility of hoping that something will change at some point. At the very beginning, the mother asks: “Isn’t that long gone: our story?” Because what every generation experiences anew is just the repetition of what has been told to the end since the beginning: “Society controls the family, the family controls the children. It goes on and on like this.” And the means of control is organized violence.
dead in lifeARD audio library