Student-designed final essay sample f

Modern Tragedy and the Ambiguity of the Identity of the Tragic Hero

In the older tragedies, such as Oedipus Rex and Hamlet, it is easy to identify the tragic hero.  The problem of the play centers around Oedipus or Hamlet and it is the responsibility of the hero to resolve the problem.  Also, the characters of Oedipus and Hamlet are more fully developed than the other characters in the plays.  The modern tragedy causes this easy identification to be more difficult and more subject to individual interpretation; there is no clear tragic hero.  Instead, there are multiple candidates who drive the plot of the tragedy in their own ways.  In A Raisin in the Sun, Long Day’s Journey into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten, and even Medea, which is considered the most modern of the ancient tragedies, the tragic hero is difficult to identify.

In Medea, it would seem that Medea would be the obvious tragic hero, since the play is named after her, but this is not necessarily the case.  Both Jason and Medea could each be tragic heroes.  Medea is a woman scorned, and the plot is constantly being driven by her actions and thoughts.  Her husband has decided to marry another woman and she feels that she must take revenge.  She has forsaken her own land to come with Jason to Corinth, but now she is being banished.  Without a husband and without a land to call her own, she is truly left in a wretched state has nothing to lose, so she sinks to the very depths of depravity to avenge her hurt pride and her loss.  She kills Jason’s bride to be and Creon, the princess’s father.  After this is accomplished, she does the most horrible thing a mother could do—she kills her own children.  She does this to make Jason suffer, but she suffers as well.  She tries to talk herself out of doing it, but eventually comes to the agonizing decision that it is the only action she can take.  In the end, she rises above her situation on a chariot drawn by dragons and escapes to Athens, which weakens her case for tragic hero.

While Jason does not have as large of a part in the play as Medea, he could also be the tragic hero.  It is Jason’s action, his leaving Medea to marry the princess of Corinth, that forces Medea’s hand.  He does this to ensure a better future for his family, or so he says.  Jason’s ignorance leads to his downfall.  While his intentions seem noble, he has reduced Medea, a woman who has sacrificed everything to be his wife, to a mere concubine.  He does not consider Medea’s feelings or her power.  As a result, Jason loses his new wife, his father-in-law the king, and most importantly, his two sons.  Jason is left a broken, empty man.  Medea has reduced him to having nothing, which is precisely what he has done to her.  While Medea escapes to Athens to begin her new life, it seems that Jason will never be able to recover from his great losses.  In this way, it seems that Jason could be the tragic hero.

In A Raisin in the Sun, both Walter Lee Younger and his mother, Lena Younger could be the tragic hero.  Mama (Lena) is the matriarch of the Younger family.  She is waiting to receive a social security check as the result of her husband’s passing, and all of her dreams for herself and her children are depending on the ten thousand dollars.  “The check actually belongs to Mama, but the decisions she makes affect the entire family” (SG 02).  Her decisions about the money do not affect only her, but they affect the rest of her family, and the magnitude of this makes her like the tragic hero.  Once she receives the money, she puts a down payment on a house, so her family can have a better place to live.  The rest of the money she gives to her son Walter Lee.  After Walter loses the money, Mama’s dreams of owning a house are crushed.  The family is thrown into a state of despair as a result of Mama’s decision.  She has lost all hope of ever realizing any of her dreams.

Walter Lee Younger is the man of the house, but is not the head of the family.  Walter is obsessed with money and has dreams of opening his own business and being wealthy and respected, instead of being a chauffer to someone who is wealthy and respected.  This greed of Walter Lee’s leads him to his downfall.  All of his hopes for creating his own wealth depend on his mother’s ten thousand dollars, which Mama gives to Walter to place in a bank account, but Walter has loftier plans and foolishly gives the money to a friend, who steals it.  After this debacle, Walter Lee loses faith in the world and quickly abandons his dreams and his pride.  He is driven to the point of begging Mr. Lindner to buy the house from him.  But instead, he stands up for his family and decides they are going to move into the house despite the fact that they do not have any money.  Walter Lee is the cause of the family’s problem, but he makes the decision for them all that will cause them all to rise above their poverty to a better situation.

Long Day’s Journey into Night is unique in that all four of the major characters—Tyrone, Mary, Jamie, and Edmund—could be tragic heroes.  The weight of the tragedy of the play and of the family depends on the ambiguity of the identity of the family member that is most tragic.  “The failure to achieve…dreams strikes at the heart of tragedy” and each of the characters have failed to reach their dreams (YH 00).  Tyrone is a man who had dreams of becoming a great Shakespearian actor.  The lure of easy money caused him to sell his dream for a role that made him famous.  This is the center of his tragedy.  Constant fear of being poor has caused him to be extremely stingy, and this cheapness causes tragedy around him, like a chain reaction.  Tyrone’s cheapness caused his wife, Mary, to become addicted to morphine.  When Mary gave birth to Edmund, Tyrone got a cheap doctor who prescribed morphine to treat her pain.  The addiction ruined Mary’s life and made family life an uneasy, unbearable chore for everyone.  When Mary was younger, she went to a Catholic school and dreamed of becoming either a concert pianist or a nun, but everything changed when she married Tyrone.  She gave up her dreams for a life on the road, a life of loneliness, never having a real home or real friends, only cheap hotels to live in and her children to talk to.  The morphine gave her an escape from her reality and she became hooked on the possibility of submerging herself into the past she lost.  She is tragic because her dreams have consumed her entirely and she feels that escape is the only option, even to the expense of losing her family.  Her condition affects everyone harshly and causes a series of accusations.  Jamie is the most vocal in his accusations and seems to take his mother’s condition the hardest.  Jamie is a raging alcoholic who prefers not to work and is a disappointment to his father, who believes in hard work.  He tries to be an actor, like his father, but lacks the work ethic.  He blames everyone around him for what is wrong with his life and does not accept responsibility for his own actions.  He blames his father for Mary’s condition, accusing him of being cheap.  He is constantly suspicious of his mother and cannot forgive her for her past wrongdoings.  The person he blames the most, however, is his brother, Edmund.  Jamie accuses Edmund of causing their mother’s morphine addiction, because of pain she experienced during Edmund’s birth.  Furthermore, Jamie is jealous of his brother and feels that his parents love Edmund more than they love him.  Edmund must always carry the guilt with him that he is the cause of Mary’s addiction.  Whether it is entirely true or not, he has been accused of it so many times, it is a difficult thought to forget.  Also, Edmund has returned from adventure like the prodigal son and is sick with consumption, or tuberculosis, which can be fatal in his time.  This is compounded with the fact that he knows his father is a notorious miser, so he fears his father will dump him in the cheapest sanatorium he can find and he will die there.  He dreams of being back at sea, which was the happiest times for him, but he cannot return because of his consumption.  However, of all of the characters, Edmund seems the least tragic, because the reader knows that he will soon go to the sanatorium, so he will at least escape this tragic family situation, while the rest are doomed to repeat each new day like the last one, facing demons that will never go away and digging out skeletons that will never be buried.

While the tragic hero of A Moon for the Misbegotten seems to be Jamie, since it is the play O’Neill wrote about his brother, Josie could also be the tragic hero.  Jamie has just suffered the loss of his mother, which caused him to fall off of the wagon and plunge head first into alcohol.  He is carrying a dark secret with him that plagues him and gives him nightmares.  He is ashamed of himself and his past actions and hopes to find true love with Josie.  That is what he desires the most because he has not known true love.  His guilt and shame culminate in the final act when he confesses his sins to Josie.  He then falls asleep in Josie’s arms, similar to a “pieta” image.  While he is sleeping, the moonlight gives him the appearance of being dead.  Jamie’s confession and figurative death have allowed him to raise again as a new man, a man who has finally faced his past and overcome it, although it is implied that he will never escape the draw of the bottle.  He has had his one night of true love and it can never be repeated.  Jamie has finally reached his dream, so he has nothing left to keep him alive.

Josie is the only woman on a farm she must remain on to take care of her father because all of her brothers have left.  She is a large woman and is insecure about her appearance, but she is in love with Jamie.  After her father tells her that Jamie plans to sell their farm to Harder, she is heartbroken because she feels that Jamie has forsaken her.  She decides to take revenge on Jamie, but she soon learns the truth—Jamie never intended to sell their farm to Harder, her father was only using her as a pawn to snare Jamie for his money.  She is finally able to show Jamie the love she has for him and comforts Jamie through his pain and guilt.  After Jamie awakens, she knows that the night of mutual love will never be repeated, and while she is glad to have had the one night, she is sad that she will never be able to share her love with Jamie again.  Josie will never leave the farm that holds her back from everything and that she will never marry or know love again.

In each of these tragedies—Medea, A Raisin in the Sun, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten—there is ambiguity as to the identity of the tragic hero.  This seems to be prevalent in modern tragedy because as the form of tragedy evolves, so must the tragic hero.  Uncertainty about the identity of the tragic hero makes the tragedy richer.  It offers more possibilities for interpretation of the play and makes the tragedy more complex as it seeps from character to character, and into the reader. [BH]