Demetrius in Titus Andronicus

Demetrius is one of the twin sons of Tamora, the Gothic queen who becomes empress of Rome. He enters the play as a captive, a young Gothic warrior, and rapidly becomes one of its central instruments of horror. Unlike his brother Chiron, Demetrius speaks less but acts with brutal efficiency. He is driven by appetite—lust for Lavinia, jealousy of his brother’s rival claims—and by obedience to his mother’s hunger for vengeance against Titus. When Aaron, Tamora’s Moorish paramour, eggs the brothers on to rape Lavinia in the forest, Demetrius requires little persuasion. He is the one who throws Bassianus’s body into the pit, who helps drag Lavinia away from her pleas for mercy, and who cuts her hands. He performs these acts not with relish but with the casual brutality of a man who sees no reason to resist.

What makes Demetrius particularly dangerous is his ordinariness. He is not a villain by nature but by circumstance and proximity. He obeys his mother because that is what sons do; he follows Aaron because Aaron presents a plan with the confidence of a schemer who has already won. When Titus later captures him and Chiron, disguised as “Rape” and “Murder,” Demetrius is bound and gagged, unable to speak in his own defense. Titus cuts his throat, grinds his bones, and bakes his head in a pie that Tamora eats without knowing what she consumes. Demetrius dies having never truly exercised choice—he has been a vehicle for others’ wills, whether his mother’s, Aaron’s, or finally Titus’s. He is a casualty of the cycle of violence as much as an agent of it, though that offers no comfort to Lavinia or her family.

The play uses Demetrius to explore the question of complicity and corruption. He is young enough that one might imagine him capable of redemption, yet he shows no sign of it. He does what he is told and desires what he is prompted to desire. By the time Titus kills him, the audience has watched him participate in the most heinous acts of the tragedy without once hesitating or expressing doubt. His silence in death—his inability to speak, to plead, to explain—may be the play’s judgment: that some violations are so complete that the violator forfeits the right to be heard.