Aaron The Moor, Pure Evil

Mutilation, group rape, and slaughter, are the major events in Titus Andronicus, one of Shakespeare’s bloodiest and most violent theatrical works. Of the 24 characters named, 14 are either dead or sentenced to die by the end of the play. A good thing to know about this play is that Titus Andronicus is a part of a popular 16th century genre called "revenge tragedy," where blood, guts, and mutilated bodies are present at all times.

There are also a political concept during the whole play. “Every time a body is hacked up, we're reminded that Rome's "body politic" has also been torn apart by civil strife. The "body politic" is a political concept that sees rulers (kings, emperors, etc.) as "heads" of state, while citizens and subjects are considered body parts”.

This political concept shows up really early on in the play when he is announcing the election of Titus as emperor, Marcus tells his brother:

"Be candidatus then, and put it on,

And help to set a head on headless Rome”

Marcus talks about the emperorless Rome like if it was a decapitated body needing desperate help. This metaphor continues during the whole play, as Titus' bad decision to select Saturninus as emperor results in a “disfigured Roman body”, this decision doesn’t make Titus totally, but partially responsible for all the violence and disgrace that eventually brakes Rome and its citizens apart (literally and figuratively) because of his denial to lead the already ragged city.

As the play keeps going, this same concept keeps showing up. Lavinia's mutilation by the “ghoulish” heirs of Rome - Chiron and Demetrius – is not but the most literal expression of this political concept.

"map of woe,"

"Rome's fair mistress"

Woman, who in her pureness and beauty represents the Roman empire. When she is silenced by the Goths (her tongue cut of), Shakespeare dramatizes the dismemberment of Rome itself. The abruption of Lavinia's body (her hands cut of) therefore, powerfully visualizes the collapse of Rome. What is surprising is how all of the figurative actions during the play become the actual.

There are plenty cases of people being dismembered by the corrupt state, all of which show the action to equal the body of the state with the body of the Roman Empire. Titus' sons are decapitated unjustly due to the plotting of Aaron and his fellow Goths; Titus sacrifices his own hand in an attempt to save them, representing his commitment of service to Rome and her emperor during his whole life, only so he (the emperor) can have the hand that represented the duty of Titus’s years of fighting for his nation.

At the play's end, Marcus, who wants to repair and unify Rome under a new ruler, says "O, let me teach you how to knit again [...] / These broken limbs again into one body" (5.3.2). Marcus is speaking metaphorically, but the playwright's sick joke here is that the stage is actually littered with "broken" bodies.

Marcus's speech to the Roman citizens in the last act, when both the emperor and the empress as well as Titus have been killed and the Goths headed by Lucius have conquered the city, offers a political alternative that would teach them to "knit again/…. These broken limbs again into one body"

But before we attribute all of these personal and political dismemberments to the Goths, it is important to remember that the first two mutilations of the play are by Titus' own hand. He hews Alarbus' limbs and sacrifices him to the Roman gods, and he kills his own son in the streets: clearly, Titus and the "true" Romans have an equally barbarous fascination with the symbolism of political dismemberment made personal. Titus cuts up Alarbus just as his army

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