Objective: This study interprets Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice through a Žižekian lens to examine how identity is shaped by loss, discontinuity, and the instability of language. It aims to analyze how the play reconfigures the Orpheus myth into a philosophical reflection on memory, subjectivity, and the transformative potential of forgetting.
Methods: Using textual analysis grounded in Žižek’s theory of the subject constituted through lack, the study explores key scenes and dialogues in Eurydice—particularly those involving Eurydice’s interactions with her father and her experiences in the underworld. The analysis focuses on narrative ruptures, linguistic fragmentation, and symbolic gestures that reveal how memory and forgetting structure the self.
Results: Findings indicate that Ruhl’s adaptation rejects the notion of identity as stable or complete. Instead, the play demonstrates how identity is continually remade through absence, rupture, and the breakdown of language. Forgetting in the underworld is not portrayed as punishment but as a process of painful renewal that enables transformation. Eurydice’s conversations with her father, though fractured and unstable, illustrate how meaning can persist even when language deteriorates. These moments reveal that communication and understanding arise not from clarity but from the effort to grasp what is slipping away. The play embodies Žižek’s idea that the subject emerges through what is missing rather than what is present.
Conclusions: Ruhl’s Eurydice ultimately presents identity as an ongoing process shaped by cycles of breaking and repair. Loss does not annihilate the self; it reshapes it. The play suggests that being human involves continually beginning again, navigating the interplay between remembering and forgetting, and learning to live with absence as a fundamental part of becoming.