Death and the Maiden is a play fundamentally concerned with memory, exploring the relationship (and occasional conflict) between personal and institutional memories. In this essay, Busiel examines these and other issues.

Ariel Dorfman observed in an interview with Carlos Reyes on the Amnesty International website, "Memory is a constant obsession for me. I deal often with people who are fighting against those who would obliterate others, who would forget them, ignore them, neglect them, erase them from the earth." Memory becomes an obsession in the context of a society confronting the legacy of a repressive regime, where painful individual memories of past injustices are often eradicated by a government which wants to forget the past or even deny that such violence ever occurred.

In Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, it is years after Paulina's abduction and torment, yet her memory of the experience remains crystal clear. She...