Representation of Human Consciousness through Giovanni's Behavior in

Dario Fo's We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay

Scenny Fryson 121211233005

Tito Fajar A. 121211233025
Widi Laksono 121211233029
Adam Afif Moll 121211233032
M. Ilham Aryaduta 121211233035

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 I. Introduction

Dario Fo is a successful actor and playwright in the twentieth century. He won the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1997. At his early age, he moved to Milan to study art. There, he
made his first appearance on stage. Then he founded a solo radio series when he met his wife.
Later they together established a production company and Dario Fo wrote a lot of plays
during those years. He had many famous plays. Among them, We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!
had its debut in Milan in 1974 (Jessie,2011).
The summary of the story is about the working class family meets a difficult financial
crisis. At first, to solve the problem, Antonia plunders the supermarket with other
housewives. They take the things they want, paying less or even paying nothing. On her way
home, she meets her friend, Margherita, and Antonia comes up with a ridiculous idea—
hiding some of the things she takes from the supermarket under the bed and some under
Magherita’s coat for her to take home. At the moment, Antonia’s husband, Giovanni, comes
home anxiously due to the news of the brigandage. To conceal the truth from Giovanni,
Antonia has no choice but to lies to him that Margherita is pregnant. Later, a sergeant and
troopers search the goods and conducting the house one by one. However, both of them were
tricked by Giovanni and Margherita and they fell on Margherita's lies. At the end of story, all
of their fabrication was exposed and they got a very serious life lesson.
According to Spirkin (1984), human consciousness is a form of mental activity, the
highest form. By mental activity we mean all mental processes, conscious and unconscious,
all mental states and qualities of the individual. These are mainly processes of cognition,
internal states of the organism, and such attributes of personality as character, temperament,
and so on. It includes the individual's relation both to these values and to himself, thus
becoming a form of self-consciousness (ibid). Human consciousness may happen because of
the realization of mind in the individual after some sort of events that happened in their life
which are unbeneficial for them. In contrast of human consciousness, unconscious is the
action that made human life become unbeneficial from the form of action or things. In this
essay, we will focus on how the human consciousness affect the story through our focus on
Giovanni's behavior towards other characters in the story and relate it with theme of the story
as well.

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 II. Analysis

Giovanni portrays as someone who has a good manner, clever mind, good heart,
decent, integrity. He also showed as someone who has faith of responsibility. It shows on
Antonia arguments and explanations that even though he is not considered as a successful
person, but he always willing to do anything in the reason of filling the requirement of family
concerns. His decent and sincere behavior to live within integrity and honor are the key point
of his behavior throughout the story. His behavior shown through devices of characterization
which is dialogue between characters.

However, he is also presents as someone who easily truthful and always has positive
perspective over another person’s opinion. He also easily to be persuade by persuasive and
logical utterance even though it is not good for his life and his straight and faithful behavior.
Like from the beginning until in the middle of the story, it shows that Giovanni always
believe with what her wife (Antonia) is saying, even though it is appeared so clear that she
made up a story about the pregnant of Margherita in order to omit the real event that she just
stole some goods. Then, the turning point of his behavior comes when he search all the town
hospital with Luigi. At first, he still gains his straight behavior by saying about his denial
towards Luigi's idea to search all the hospital. He also said "I'm going back to the station and
get a train to work. I'll already be docked an hour's pay as it is" (page 41). We can see his
real behavior when he said that word and it indicates his dedicated towards his job as well.
After that, bunch of coffee sacks fall from the truck and Luigi start to persuade Giovanni to
take it. Giovanni said that the action could lead them to have the same level of thieves and
looters and he keep his own belief for not taking any goods that not come from his own hard
work. However, Luigi's persuade him that starting tomorrow their company will be
downsized and they won't get paid for last two weeks as well. Suddenly, Giovanni changes
his perspective and said "Come on. Help me load up this stuff. Let's take it all" (page 42).

At first, Giovanni does not really contribute real significant appearance towards the
theme. It tells that Giovanni is a person who really loves with honor and integrity and if he
has to do something that contradict with his heart it only appears spontaneously or being
influenced by others. Then within the story flows, at the middle of the story, Giovanni starts
to show his emotion, perspective and mind. Eventually, this kind of perspective and behavior
could lead towards the theme and also our discussion about human consciousness itself.

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 Giovanni has a distinct role on this story and we may say that he is the main character
who has significant performance for influencing the storyline, because he tends to mingle and
emerge in another character performance. Like, He shows his concern about the pregnancy of
Margherita which actually it is only a lie, and he also shows his sincerity, attention into his
bestfriend Luigi. Furthermore, Giovanni appears as someone who has a good skill of
conversation like what he did while he was talking to police, paratrooper. His conversation
for somehow makes us entertained, because he has a tricky idea to talk to these officers.
Definitely, his conversation with the police and paratroopers has contributed significant line
of the story. The story becomes entertaining, humorous, but yet also intense and threatening
at the same time. Regarding the explanation above, we can compile, investigate and gather all
of the assumption from each charcacter that eventually proves and balancing an idea or theme
that being led by Giovanni. To emphasize this analysis we will provide an evidence or
anything that related with Giovanni from each character.

The first character that we need to analyze is Giovanni's wife, Antonia. Antonia is the
wife of Giovanni who also has a really significant role in We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!
Antonia also supports Giovanni’s role since what happens in the drama occurs because of
Antonia’s deed. In the story, we can see that Giovanni is a man who is easy to play with
words, which is shown in the evidence when he argues with two police officers (sergeant and
trooper) who do their job in inspecting local people’s residence, including his flat. As in an
incident when the first officer (sergeant) comes to his flat, he is succeeded in convincing the
sergeant that the condition of his flat is safe and there is no stolen thing which is the sergeant
means. Instead of inspecting his flat, the sergeant and Giovanni tell each other about the
condition of the local people which are poor and live in pity. But, when Giovanni faces his
wife who is also good in arranging lies, he seems believe and cannot break the fiction
argument his wife says to him. Whereas, Giovanni is able to debate some people who come
to his flat to check some things in his flat since there is a stealing case in a store by some
local people who are not able to pay more than they can afford. The evidence which can
clarify how Giovanni is easily convinced with his wife’s fiction stories is when he first comes
home then meets Antonia and Margherita.

Unintentionally, he focuses on Margherita’s belly which gets bigger and it makes him
shocked when he asks Antonia about what happens to Margherita’s belly. Immediately,
Antonia makes a scenario so that Giovanni will not find out the stolen goods which she keeps
in Margherita’s belly or she will be punished all the way Giovanni could. A little hesitation,

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but somehow Giovanni believes in what his wife said about the pregnancy of Margherita.
Whereas, Giovanni says that he saw Margherita a week ago and she still looked normal with
the flat belly, so he wonders why she can be pregnant at the short time. So he finally believes
in that ‘reality’ he just receives and continues the story to his best friend who is Margherita’s
husband, Luigi. From the thing which is explained above, we can conclude that
unconsciously, Giovanni is believed in Antonia’s lies. Whereas, he can deceive the officers
with his own words. Thus, if Giovanni can do such thing, he should not easily get fooled, too.

The second character is Luigi's wife, Margherita. As we know that she is a housewife
with difficult economic condition, thinking how hard it is for her husband to work and not get
enough to fulfill their needs, even their primary needs. Therefore, she accepts Antonia’s offer
to take some of the stolen goods and bring it home, for it would be such a big help for her
family. When Giovanni went home, Margherita feels panic and in that condition, she follows
Antonia’s instructions to put the goods in her belly, as if she was pregnant. We can see
Margherita here as a person who easily to get panic and she can't think clear enough to solve
the problem itself. Luckily, she got Antonia by her side to stand up for her in order to protect
the stolen goods and the truth lies behind it.

The characteristic of Giovanni is very thoughtful and highly respected. He does not
really like the crimes, including theft. He always insists to his wife do not steal even though
they are in the crisis financial at that time. By knowing this, Margherita wants to take the
stolen goods home with Antonia but she must not let Giovanni to found out, or else Antonia
will get punished by his husband. Moreover , he always think positively about everything
including trust in his wife even though she lied him about hiding the stolen goods home
inside Margherita’s belly by saying that Margherita is truly pregnant. Giovanni has a friend
whose name is Luigi who is Margherita’s husband. She might also feel scared that if
Giovanni found out, obviously he will tell her husband. It does not rule out the possibility that
she will get punished by his husband as well as Antonia. The dignity and honesty that owned
within Giovanni make Margherita very respectful to him. This kind of relationship makes
Giovanni's action towards Margherita stay on his consciousness because he still shown his
real behavior, which is portrays as a good man even though this action is made up from his
unconsciousness action towards Antonia whom told him to cover up the pregnancy story
itself. In a short way, we can say that he doing this action in conscious mind which processed
from unconscious one.

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 Next, the third character is Luigi. His role in this essay is very important because he is
the one who reveal how Giovanni's consciousness changed dynamically. He is one of realistic
characters in the story and also the husband of Margherita. He also showed as foil character
because his attitude is contrast with Giovanni who is shown as good and straight person in
this story. However, this case of contrast itself contributes a lot in determine human
consciousness theory towards Giovanni's behavior. When he first appears on the stage he
wanted to learn his wife whereabouts to Giovanni, which implies that he actually is a very
caring person. He even put his wrath to his own best friend Giovanni just to know where his
wife is, but right after Giovanni told him where his wife is he seems pleased yet puzzled,
because Antonia brought his wife Margareta to hospital because Margherita will bear his
child. The reason why he is puzzled is because he does not even believe to have a child in
such a short time. In this situation, we can see Giovanni's reaction towards Luigi when he
asks about his wife. Giovanni mumbles and make a circular argument in order to avoid Luigi
to know about the pregnancy itself (page 34-36). Giovanni's smart talk ability could lead
Luigi's perception to be calmer in order to face the pregnancy itself. In this case, we can see
Giovanni's consciousness because he still stays on his behavior as a straight and obedient
person. He still obeys his wife's word to make Luigi calmer before knowing about
Margherita's condition.

Luigi is a dynamic character as his personality had changed a lot, especially when he
and Giovanni started to stole some goods. This case was the crucial point for Giovanni's
consciousness. As we can see, when both these man search the entire hospital in the city,
several sacks of coffee dropped from the truck when Giovanni argues about the craziness of
Luigi's idea. Instead of replying Giovanni's utterance, Luigi distracted by those sacks and he
said "Yeah. Ethiopian. Kenyan. French vanilla. Let's take some home" (page 42). Then
Giovanni replied that he just want to work for what he has right now instead of being thieves
or whatsoever. However, Luigi's excuses about downsized and closing plant things made
Giovanni unconscious of what his true behavior again. When Luigi said "We won't get paid
for our last two weeks" (page 42), Giovanni replied "Come on. Help me load up this stuff.
Let's take it all" (page 42). In this case, we can see Giovanni didn't gain his consciousness at
that time because rather than stay in his straight and honest behavior; he chose to stand beside
Luigi to steal all of those sacks. What he did at that time is clearly different with what he said
at first towards Antonia. It shows clearly on how human consciousness sometimes can
change because of the situation they face at that time. The phenomenon that Giovanni

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experienced here is called labile. Giovanni become labile at that time and this phenomenon
clearly shows his unconsciousness. From this turning point, Giovanni become more and more
involved in the story and he becomes dynamic character because of that rather than fixed or
static character.

From the context of this essay, clearly Luigi is an important character because even
though he appears in the middle of the drama, but as the time goes on he becomes more and
more involved since he stole some goods with Giovanni and changes his consciousness
significantly. And so he can be considered almost like primary characters because of his
progressive-involved in the story. Luigi appears as someone who has good smart-talk skill
later on that inherited by his own best friend Giovanni, it is proved when he ask the grave
keeper to let him put his stolen goods and send it to Giovanni’s home (page 51-53). And of
course his style of speaking is entertaining and funny but will become tenser as the conflict
rises.

The last character in our analysis is four supporting characters, which are state
trooper, police sergeant, gravedigger, and grandfather. All of those characters played by same
performer. The reason lies behind of it is because all of them were very important towards
story complexity. In our case, those characters also help us to understand Giovanni's true
behavior and how he reacts towards the society. Most of them play significant role in order to
create a tension and conflict between main characters. Imagine that if there is no police
sergeant conducting Giovanni's home at the first place, then the story will not be as complex
as it shown. Antonia may live happily with her stolen goods with other main characters. It
applies the same as other supporting characters such as troopers who not give up to get rid of
stolen goods, the gravedigger who helps Giovanni and Luigi hide their stolen sacks of coffee
and grandfather or Antonia's father who reveal all the stolen goods towards the main
character at the end of story.

The connection between those characters with Giovanni's consciousness can be

proven in many events such as in the beginning of story, the police sergeant conducting the
search at his house and rather than being afraid, Giovanni shows his smart-talk ability toward
the police sergeant and blabbering his poverty that he can't afford decent food and
whatsoever. Then, the topic-changing happen at that time from the poverty to corrupt
government because the police sergeant was fell of Giovanni's smart talk and later on he
chose to not go inside Giovanni's home because he believe Giovanni and his family doesn't

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steal anything. At that time, Giovanni's smart talk ability is one of his consciousness actions
as we mentioned before because of his loyalty towards what his wife said, even though he
doesn't even know about the lies itself and like we said before, he become unconscious when
he fell of Antonia's lie. Also, when Antonia's father (grandfather) come to their house and
revealed all of Antonia's stolen goods, Giovanni regains his consciousness about his own
promise that he would kill his wife if she becomes a thief. However, the killing action did not
happen because Luigi interrupt it and Giovanni and Antonia start debate each other about the
stolen things (page 63-64). Then, Giovanni also revealed his stolen goods with Luigi and he
completely gains his consciousness at that time. He is also the one who says the moral value
towards the audience because as we explain before, he plays a significant role and match for
being a good figure for the society. Indirectly, we can say that grandfather appearance create
a turning point for Giovanni's behavior from the unconscious one to conscious once more. It
is shown that the supporting characters in this story play important roles in relevance toward
human consciousness even though they only play in some part of the story.

III. Conclusion

We can conclude this essay by shows the motivation occurs in this story which adapt more on
greed motive. Most of the main character in this story drives by greed they have in their mind
so that is the reason why they stay to defend their selves about the stolen goods again the
authorities who come against them. Their behavior seems support the motive itself because
most of them were really great on smart-talk ability and creating unsuspecting event that
could protect them from their greed. They also good at persuade others to defend their selves
so their greed covered well in order for them to survive in the poverty that eat them day by
day. This motive could also lead to hope for reward motive but according to the story, greed
would be more appropriate because of the reason we explained above. In conclusion, the
connection between Giovanni with the theme of this story is that human consciousness may
help you through hard situation and be what you are but remember that unconsciousness also
happen at particular time in particular situation and it may changes on how you are and how
you treat the society ever after. Be more confident on who you are and stay like that if it is a
good behavior no matter how hard the situation because you will achieve something beyond
of what you get in unconscious mode.

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 IV. References

Spirkin, Albert. 1984. Consciousness of the World and the World of Consciousness.
Available on https://www.marxist.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-
materialism/ch03.html#ch03-s01

Lu, Jessie. 2011. The Distinguishing Features of Dario Fo's We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!.
Available on project.hgsh.hc.edu.tw/DataBase/224.pdf

Jenkins, Ron (translator). We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! And Other Works: The Collected
Plays of Dario Fo, Volume One. May 1, 2000. Los Angeles: Theatre Communications Group