After she caught him, she gives him a small feeling of what she felt during the torture, by putting him in the same situation as her. At the beginning of act 2, she makes him realise how powerless he is and that she has all the control over him, the same way he was with her, “…but in here, for now, I’m in command…” She continuously hints at what he did to her. “..beats drinking your own piss doesn’t it?” By telling them this and proving that she is in command, it is mostly clear that Paulina wishes for revenge and will inflict some harm to him.
However, at some points it is hard to tell if Paulina actually desires revenge on him. She does not harm him in any way or abuse him in the way they did to her, up until the end. She mentions the torture she went through several times in the novel by telling Gerado and also by imitating what they did to her. She does this by firstly making Roberto feel what she felt, and then imitating his voice and saying how he treated her. For example, she imitates Roberto’s voice saying “You hungry?...I’ll give you something big and filling so you can forget your hunger.” She only shows how much she has suffered and does not harm Roberto though. This begins to make the reader question of her intentions.
Before capturing him, she probably wished to give him physical and emotional damge to get revenge. But now that he is tied up helplessly in front of her, she realisies that although she definitely wants a feeling of revenge, both she and Gerado know that it will not ultimately allow her to move on. At this point, she, as well as the reader, is not even certain if revenge will do any good for her. Letting him go will have the same result as killing him. This makes physical revenge seem unimportant to her, as it can never allow her to move on. She knows that in this case, doing the same cannot allow her to move one, but killing him will be good for society. This makes it seem as if revenge was not the only reason which made her capture him.
What Paulina suffered was emotional and very painful. She suggests allowing Roberto to suffer the same physical feeling as her, but it was not how she wanted revenge. “So I asked myself if we couldn’t use a broom…that wasn’t something that I really wanted – nothing that physical…I want him to confess.” In the end, it seems that this was all that Paulina wanted. However, due to her knowing that nothing can save her in the end, even this remains uncertain.
Gerado has an important and very influential job at the Governemnt Commission. Paulina knows this and also the purpose of it. It only deals with cases that end in death, and not cases such as Paulina’s. She states how she feels about her husband’s job. “…the Commission only deal with the dead, those who can’t speak.” This makes her feel betrayed at Gerado for not helping with her case. Also, during the period of her abduction, Gerado cheated on her several times. Paulina is very sensitive, especially after the incident and feels that Gerado acts against her. For this reason, she also tries to get revenge against Gerado by abducting Roberto.