Copy of midterm exam 2004

Complete midterm essay sample 1

Complete midterm essay sample 2

Complete midterm essay sample 3

Excerpts from midterms

Tragedy is the greatest genre in literature.  Tragedy encompasses significant people, significant problems, and significant messages to its audience.  Tragedy tackles tough issues that have been around for hundreds of years.  The longevity of these types of problems, their seriousness, and their societal implications indicate an important position for tragedy since it is the genre that deals with them.  Scott Stewart quotes Cara Skinner as saying that, “tragedy has a lasting power that seems to stretch across time and generations.  The reasons for this stem from the powerful issues tragedy addresses and the emotions it evokes in its audience” (SS 02). [RA]

When discussing the idea of “Tragedy” being the greatest literary genre a few things must be discussed.  For example, the audience must have an understanding of what a genre is and the different types of genres.  Also the reader must decided what aspects of a tragedy make it more sustainable throughout the years that other genres such as comedy do not have.  It seems to me that “tragedy” can be called the greatest genre because tragedy deals with everyday situations that appeal to a larger audience and are able to be able to adapt to any era. [BB]

Tragedy deals with a deeper realm of human mind.  Which is to say that tragedies require more thought and consideration than the other genres.  Comedies generally do not induce thought or intense feelings.  Generally comedy is more popular with the masses because of its ability to trigger happy, and content feelings. Yet the laughter one might hear in the movie theater while watching a comedy is not a cognitive process, rather a “spontaneous impulse” not involving the decisions to feel happy and amused (Hazlitt 1).“Tragedy is understood to have a problem that is serious and whose solution will not be easily come by” (LR 02)   The lack of concentration it requires to experience comedies is evident in Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, where it is nothing more than physical humor.  Physical humor is what initiates that impulse. Human life is not simple and can not be lived by impulses alone.  Which is why tragedy is a necessary part of our culture.  It imitates the complexity of reality.  The subject of incest, which appears in many tragedies such as Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, and Desire Under the Elms, is there because it is a situation provoking fear and disgust in every audience.  According to Freud, all young boys experience these feelings and when confronted with them in adulthood, deny ever wanting to be in love with their mothers.  This tangled web of instinct, emotion and social norms provides an emotionally charged backdrop to tragedies.  The complexity of those tragedies mirror the complexity of real life and can draw out those feelings in the audience. [AB]

Each of these genres contains characteristics all to their own, and then again they share others.  I like to look at it as on a spectrum with tragedy at the far left, comedy at the far right, and romance somewhere in the middle, along with many others.  When we look at the far left side of the spectrum to tragedy, we see a genre filled with complexity and uniqueness. . . .Tragedy is a genre that many times deals with tough issues that may be “tough to swallow” and uncomfortable; but this discomfort is found in the personal connection we each develop to its characters and plot.  Moving down the genre spectrum we next see romance. Romance, although a bit complex, tends to be more light hearted and simple than tragedy.  However, in the genre of romance the audience tends to connect with the characters and plot as well, the difference is the issues that the plots in the two genres deal with are quite distinct of one another. For example, if we look to a Midsummer Nights Dream we are able to see a more romantic plot. A plot dealing with a journey of love with a bit of struggle and hardship, but everything is perfect in the end. In contrast, if we look to Hamlet, we see a plot filled with revenge, confusion, hatred, and jealousy and the corrupt are dead in the end. Although this may be a relief, the connection that you make with these characters during the play, make it very hard to imagine.  The last genre on the spectrum is comedy. Comedy is very easy to spot and very easy to watch.  Comedy is a genre that can be described with very simple words: light, simple, easy, not personal.  Comedy does not have a great plot to relate with, it focuses more on the spectacle and less on the story.  Comedy is easy to watch because the audience is not able to relate with the characters they may be watching. In the end things are always good, but they were more than likely good all the way through the play.  As you can see these genres really are on a spectrum.  [AC]

Throughout history, humans have set out to entertain themselves. In ancient Rome, citizens attended religious attended displays of human strength, such as chariot races or battles between gladiators. In ancient Greece, people attended religious festivals where they saw plays like Oedipus Rex and Antigone. The plays of Shakespeare entertained queens and peasants alike during the Elizabethan era. Now, in modern times, we still seek to be entertained in many of the same ways. Our chariot drivers are now NASCAR drivers, our gladiators are now football players, and the performances we watch appear on stage, on movie screens, or on our television sets. In relation to entertainment, our standards and expectations have not changed much. We can still fit plays, movies, and television shows into different genre categories, and we can still label tragedy the greatest genre of them all.

            Humans tend to organize everything from insects to tube socks, why would our entertainment be any different. The concept of genre is humanities attempt to organize our entertainment. The genre handout describes genre as breaking material down into “a type, kind, or class of literature”. There are three broad categories, including subject, representation, and narrative. Subject genre focuses on the subject matter, for example, if we describe a movie with a cast full of women, the categorization of “chick flick” is bestowed upon the movie. Subject genre is the most broad of the three categories. The subject of the material in a subject genre may become blurry and fit into more than one category. Representational genre “refers to the number and type of voices in the genre” (genre handout 3). Representational genre is more likely to have a narrator or dialogue. Most plays, movies, and television shows, fit into the representational genre category. The third category is narrative genre. This genre “refers to the kind of story or plot that a work of literature tells or enacts” (genre handout 3). Narrative genre follows four basic story lines, tragedy, comedy, romance, and satire. The differences in these story lines defines tragedy’s role as the greatest genre.

            To define tragedy as the greatest genre, one must first examine the competition. Comedy is perhaps the most popular genre, but its baseness and relative simplicity causes comedy’s audience to quickly forget about the two hours they just spent watching it. . . .

Tragedy makes the audience think. Seldom does one see people waxing philosophical about a movie such as Dumb and Dumber. Plays such as Oedipus, Hamlet, and Desire Under the Elms all have deep psychological issues coursing through them. The plays cause the audience to ask questions about the characters and their actions. The audience may wonder why it took Oedipus and his wife/mother so long to realize the situation they had put themselves into. An astute observer may proclaim it is because of an unconscious desire to sleep with each other. One common observation of Hamlet is that he waited awhile to kill his murdering uncle. In the meantime, Hamlet sunk into a deep depression and madness that pushed him to the brink of sanity. In Desire Under the Elms, an audience member may come out of the performance shaken by Abbie’s actions and wondering what could drive a woman to kill her offspring. These plays open up a number of doors into different psychological and sociological realms, which make the plays interesting and add to tragedy’s greatness. . . . [SC]

Tragedy is a staple of the human condition. One cannot run from it, or escape it; tragedy is inevitable.  Whether it is the untimely demise of a childhood pet, the loss of a first love, or the death of a loved one, every human in any society faces tragedy.  So why should man be interested in tragedy as entertainment?   Why, if he must face it in time, would he choose to see it performed, or read it alone?  It is because at the heart of tragedy is an unabashed commentary on the raw emotion of the human heart.  It is not processed through the Hollywood dream machine that makes everything turn out all right.  Tragedy is great because it is real, it does not hinge on action, or spectacle, but the success of tragedy depends solely on the strength of the plot.  There are no gimmicks, no special effects that will hold the interest of an audience in a tragedy.  The plot must bear the entire burden. . . .

Tragedy always focuses on characters that matter to the world of the play.  Comedy however according to Aristotle’s poetics is an “an imitation of characters of a lower type” (Aristotle, V).  Romance usually has some sort of class struggle inside of it, however this is not as important to the play as is the separation of the character’s from their goal.  A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a classic combination of romance and comedy. . . . [DD]

. . . Representational genre refers to the number and types of voices in the genre and there are three types.  The narrator or single-voice occurs when one speaker or voice speaks directly to the audience.  Examples of this would be a stand-up comedian or a preacher.  The second is drama, or dialogue, which is when two or more people are speaking to each other.  This gives the audience the feeling that they are overhearing something instead of directly experiencing it.  Most plays and television shows use dialogue.  The last type of Representational genre is a combination of narrator and dialogue, which occurs when there are characters who speak to each other, but there is also a narrator.  An example of this is The Glass Menagerie, where Tom is the narrator who occasionally addresses the audience, but he is also a character in the play. . . .

. . . the tragic hero is not entirely good or bad, and he commits the error that leads to his downfall because of a tragic flaw, not because he is inherently evil.  This allows the reader or audience to feel sympathy for the character.  For example, Hamlet did not know that Polonius was hiding in his mother’s room when he killed him.  He believed he was striking against Claudius.  Had Hamlet knowingly killed Polonius, he would be perceived as a bad guy and the reader would lose sympathy for him. . . .

However, placing works of literature into different genres is not a perfect science because the various genres tend to overlap.  For example, Hamlet is tragedy, but it is not purely a tragedy because there are elements of comedy as well as elements of romance.  Obviously Hamlet is a tragedy because all of the major characters die in the end and the arrival of Fortinbras is the indication that the people of Denmark will be better off.  But there are comedic elements of Hamlet, such as the scene with the grave digger and Hamlet’s interaction with Polonius, when he calls him a “fishmonger.”  There are also elements of romance.  Ophelia’s death by drowning, whether it is suicide or accidental, is described in romantic terms.  There are flowers everywhere and it seems as though through death, Ophelia is rising above her situation and escaping the conditions around her, the death of her father and the ill treatment from the man she loves.  Also, Hamlet feels separated from Ophelia because he sees her as a pawn of Polonius.  He must distance himself from her, and this is the separation, but after his return from England, he thought he would be able to be reunited with her.  So, genre is not really prescriptive, but rather descriptive.  You cannot assign a work to a specific genre, but the work can contain elements of that genre.

Tragedy is different from other genres in its scope.  The problem presented in a tragedy effects everyone.  The beginning action of Oedipus Rex involves the attempt to rid the people of Thebes of the plague that has beleaguered them.  Oedipus wishes to find its cause and this is what drives the play and he finds that he is the cause.  He has murdered his father and borne children by his mother and this is the cause of the plague upon Thebes.  Oedipus resolves the issue by banishing himself.  In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there is a plague as well, but it is only briefly alluded to and doesn’t seem to affect anyone except the fairies, and it is the result of Oberon and Titania fighting.  After this brief description of the problem, it is never mentioned again and the reason for its resolution is never actually explained. . . . [BH]

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
Shakespeare, As You Like It

William Shakespeare said it best.  Through life we are players with in a play.  We experience the same genres as the actors do whether it be Comedy, Romance, Satire, or Tragedy. These genres not only represent the lives of the actors but also the lives we live day to day.  This is why we can relate to characters in the books we read, and the plays we see. Upon the stage of life we face many different emotions: Some of laughter, some of life altering thought, and some of tears.  When we pay $20 or so dollars to sit in an audience where we become a part of the lives represented to us on stage.  They are lives we connect with. They are maybe lives we have experienced ourselves.  Sometimes we want to be a part of them and laugh with them. Sometimes we want to reach out to them, to hold them, and to share their grief.  Either way, when we take part to sit in the audience we can be guaranteed certain emotions.  If we go to see a comedy we will most likely experience some humorous misunderstandings, maybe a series of lighthearted unfortunate events, but we will always leave the audience with a smile:  A smile that captures the guaranteed resolution of unity, and the feeling that all is well within the world. Comedy is more popular than a Tragedy simply because people want to feel good; they want to escape their own daily tragedies.  However, when we go to experience a tragedy we are destined to be provoked by a purging of emotions whether they change or lives or they just make us relate to the characters and thus lead us into deep thoughts about our own lives.  One might find it difficult to experience these life altering emotions from a comedy, romance or satire, however when one sees or experiences a Tragedy, one can certainly guarantee the tears that can change the way one might perceive the world.  This is why Tragedy is the greatest genre. . . .[CW]