Over the centuries, doubles in literature create or intensify certain themes. In The Visit, the double signifies change and brings out the truth through dialogue, images, symbols and characters. Characters function as stand-ins through dialogue, while symbols function to represent characters. Settings enhance a character's duality or employ them as a doppelganger. Doubles also show the irony within a work and how it makes a theme more important. Dialogue is the most important form of doubling in the Visit. Dialogue doubles in two ways, when characters speak simultaneously and when characters repeat themselves. The couple, Koby and Loby, are first introduced as Claire makes her case for justice. She says I got her pregnant and bribed Koby and Loby so I wouldn't have to claim paternity of the baby. When they admit this crime, they say the dialogue together and repeat it. The dialogue is doubled when they say it together and doubled again when they repeat it. Doubling down twice intensifies their message and shows the justice that was served to them for committing the crime, foreshadowing the justice that will be served to Ill. The simultaneous repetitions of the lines show Claire's guilt and revenge especially when the Couple describes how Claire punished them. Toby and Roby, her ex-husbands, "castrate and blind [them], castrate and blind [them]" (Durrenmatt 34) Durrenmatt employs another group through two women who visit Ill's store. They enter the store to purchase the goods, repeating one after the other to double the order. First they double the order starting with the milk, then the butter, the bread and finally the chocolate. Each order gets more and more expensive buying white bread and even splurging on a chosen... middle of paper... or becoming part of a character's physical appearance. The symbols of the doubling of the pair of yellow shoes and the black panther form the themes of corruption and ignorance in The Visit show the duality of the characters, as with Claire and the Golden Apostle. Through settings, symbols and dialogues, themes of corruption and ignorance are realized and the change in the community is signified the change in morality. The doubles and couples in the Visit demonstrate that a simple dollar sign can improve physical community but damage the standards of humanity. Durrenmatt warns the audience that a character, like Claire, is someone who can change the morals of a society with the passing of a law and the promise of justice. Works Cited Durrenmatt, Friedrich. The visit. Trans. Joel Agee. New York: Grove Press, 2006. Print.