final exam assignment

LITR 4533 TRAGEDY  Final Exam Samples 2012 Essays & Excerpts on Part A: Overall Learning Experience

Jennifer Hamilton

Tragic Imitation

          When I began the course on tragedy I initially believed I had a decent understanding of the genre. However, after only a few weeks I realized there is so much more to this subject than I originally thought. The common preconception of tragedy is that everyone dies at the end. This may be true in many tragedies; however, that is not the ultimate meaning to take away after reading or watching a tragedy. While I have read quite a few of our texts in other courses, it is only now, after completing the course, that I have been able to begin piecing together all the pieces of the information. In mythology I had become familiar with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides but only as a primary source to Greek culture. In philosophy we covered Plato, Aristotle, and Nietzsche but only insofar as their theories related to one another. It is tragedy that allows all of these great writers to form a connection that unifies their differences.

          The first day of class we had to consider the question, “Is tragedy the greatest of all genres?” Without a doubt, tragedy is truly the deepest, most thought provoking genre, but the greatest? With each day that passes, I become even more convinced that it must be. So, what about tragedy makes it so meaningful that it tends to remain in our mind? We have learned that there are certain elements in tragedy that tend to make it stand out. First, tragedies tend to deal with moral or social problems that are considered important to the culture. After delving into several different great eras in tragedy, we found that the problems each period dealt with may have been unique to the time period; however, what remains constant is the use of tragedy as a learning experience that instructs the audience. These problems that the characters struggle with resonate with the audience, inspiring feelings of pity and empathy that can be related to. Aristotle writes in Poetics, “[A perfect tragedy should] imitate actions which excite pity and fear [catharsis], this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation” (XIII (a)).

          It is the imitation of real life that makes a tragedy so intense. The characters are neither all good nor all bad, but reside somewhere in between, similar to reality. Sadly, the tragic hero will commit some sort of fatal flaw or mistake which will spiral into a series of uncontrollable events in which he will suffer. For example, in Oedipus the King by Sophocles, it was prophesized that the son of Laius, King of Thebes, would kill his father. As a result, Laius orders his son to be killed; however, he secretly was saved. The play, like many others, toys with the idea of free will versus fate when Oedipus returns to Thebes and unintentionally fulfills the prophecy when he murders his father and marries his mother not knowing he was their son.

          It is through his mistakes and suffering that the audience connects with Oedipus. His pain and mistakes make him real, human, and that is something everyone can identify with. Nietzsche writes on the acceptance of reality in The Birth of Tragedy, “Both have truly seen to the essence of things, they have understood, and action repels them; for their action can change nothing in the eternal essence of things, they consider it ludicrous or shameful that they should be expected to restore order to the chaotic world” (39).

It is the action of the hero, trying to change his fate, which sets tragedies apart. In a comedy for instance, often the humor is often centered on the physical plot or action. For example, a common technique used in comedies is that of mistaken identities. In contrast, tragedy tends to focus on the characters themselves and the dialogue between, along with the overall point or moral. It seems like no matter how much we come to like the character/s, ultimately something tragic will happen and force the audience to learn from their mistake. It is this learning experience that I feel sets tragedy apart and marks it as great. Whether it was a play written two thousand years ago, two hundred years ago, or even just two years ago, tragedies continue to appeal to audiences as meaningful and thought provoking.

Work Cited

Aristotle. “Poetics on Tragedy.” Tragedy Course webpage. University of Houston, summer 2012. Web. XIII (a).

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. 39.