The Man Outside

The Man Outside (German: Draußen vor der Tür, literally Outside, at the door) is a play by Wolfgang Borchert, written in a few days in the late autumn of 1946. It made its debut on German radio on 13 February 1947.

The Man Outside describes the hopelessness of a post-war soldier called Beckmann who returns from Russia to find that he has lost his wife and his home, as well as his illusions and beliefs. He finds every door he comes to closed. Even the Elbe River rejects his suicide, washing him up on shore. The play ends with what can be assumed to be Beckmann's death.

Due to its release during the sensitive immediate postwar period, Borchert subtitled his play "A play that no theatre wants to perform and no audience wants to see." Despite this, the first radio broadcast (February 1947) was very successful. The first theatrical production of The Man Outside (at the Hamburger Kammerspiele) opened on the day after Borchert's death, 21 November 1947.

The play consists of five scenes in one act. It makes use of expressionist forms and Brechtian techniques, such as the Verfremdungseffekt (estrangement effect) to disorient and engage its audience.

The list of characters, translated from the original text of the play:

Following the character list, there is a short introduction (two paragraphs) to the play (similar to the original dramatic use of a prologue): "A man" (Beckmann) returns to his German home town, but there is nobody to go to. At first, he feels distanced from his life, thinking it is a film. But slowly he realizes that it is an "all-day film".

The play begins with an overfed undertaker (apparently Death) with gas (belching) examining a body by the river Elbe, not the first one. The body does not appear to belong to a soldier, although he is wearing soldier's clothes. The undertaker makes the nihilistic claim that this death changes nothing. The Old Man (apparently God) enters, crying and explaining: His children are killing each other. Since no one believes in him anymore, he can do nothing to stop them. Uninterested, the undertaker agrees that this is very tragic indeed.

...
Wikipedia