Bombed
The expensive hotel room turns into a bombed-out graveyard about midway through the play. What has been a lavish hotel room turns into a debris-filled cavern, and the superficial signifiers of wealth and luxury are destroyed.
Rape
There are many explicitly staged moments of rape in the play. At the time of its premiere, many critics were outraged by what they saw as the gratuitousness of these shocking images. Indeed, the rapes that occur, of both Ian and Cate, are imagistic centers of the play, visual representations of the brutality of human beings. Sarah Kane does not place these moments of brutality offstage or in the next room, instead choosing to embed them in the action of the play itself. They are both dramatically and visually shocking moments. Particularly, the moment when the Soldier follows up his rape of Ian with penetrating his rectum with the gun is an exceedingly disturbing image.
Violence
In addition to the shocking rapes, there are multiple instances of disturbing violence, all of which are meant to be staged explicitly. While performing fellatio on Ian, Cate bites his penis. Later, the Soldier rapes Ian, before sucking out his eyes and eating them. Then, in the final scene, Ian pulls up the dead baby that Cate buried under the floorboards and eats it to keep from starving. All these instances of violence are gruesome, shocking, and explicit, and are part of what made Blasted so controversial when it was first produced.
Unseen
Ian orders gin and food from room service. The orders are delivered as if by an invisible waiter. Each time Ian and Cate open the door after someone knocks with the food, there is a plate or a bottle on the floor outside, but no hotel staff to be found. This gives the illusion that they are in the hotel alone, being looked after by unseen apparitions.
