Judith

     Do the characters change as a result of their actions? Another way to ask this question would be do our actions change us? This question when paired with Judith works quite well as the major dramatic question rather than the obvious "will Holofernes be killed by Judith?" or "will Judith succeed?" In order to tell if a character changes though, that character has to be viewed in the light of characters that do not change in the play. The only character that actually changes throughout the play is Judith who goes through several stages of change. Holofernes could be argued to have changed, losing one's head is quite an alteration. However, his is a physical transformation and his character stayed intact until his demise. Judith however starts off as an individual with a mission, who is ready to do her duty. After some conversation though she wavers and questions herself. That is until the Servant changes Judith's perspective of the situation and Judith goes into a rage! Afterwards she wants to make things "right" again on human carnal level, as if it would make a difference. This brief stint of insanity brought Judith to her lowest point and shut her down completely. No longer did we have the focused woman at the beginning of the play. Then through the words of the Servant, Judith started regaining her strength, but is it the same Judith? I will argue not since this new Judith had taken on a cloak of cruelty, though strong and confident, she was not the Judith we once knew. Is this for better or for worse? The play does not answer that question, but she was definitely changed due to her actions.
     The language of the play helped to accentuate certain aspects of the play. The playwright has the characters speak in an elegant tongue riddled with expletives and bolded phrases that would match our dialect today. They gave a sense of the baseness of the situation. "I want to fuck." It does not get much more base and to the point than that. This setting is also of an ancient one long before our current civilization, so the mixed language also gives an idea of a different time, developed but not fully developed.