final exam assignment

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

Susan Newman

July 6, 2012

Final Exam - Part A

Peeling Back the Layers of Tragedy

   At the start of this course, I began learning valuable information about genre, and the construction and audience reaction to Tragedy. Tragedy contains flawed characters that are both good and evil, which is something I had not reflected to a great extent until attending lectures in this class. Layered characters, even when their actions are over-the-top (such as Oedipus stabbing out his eyes with pins), are more relatable than a perfect hero or a heartless villain found in genres of fantasy or romance. I have recently learned that even when a character commits murder in a tragedy, oftentimes the audience senses justice in the act.

   In Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon, Clytemnestra might be considered a despicable wife by the audience if she is judged based solely on the fact that she cheats on her husband and plots, along with her lover, her husband’s demise. But, the audience can sympathize with her anger and resentment toward Agamemnon for his sacrificing the life of their innocent daughter for his pursuit of war. His honor was more precious to him than his child’s life. In addition, the reader or watcher of the play might speculate Agamemnon was a lousy husband, and after years of her being alone while he was at war, Clytemnestra found love from another man.

   During the course of this class, I have realized that the audience often rationalizes this way because they want to find redeeming qualities in the characters and want to even like them. Of course, it makes sense that I would not be the only one seeking common ground with these characters or wanting to respect or admire them but I suppose I assumed it was because I have a tendency to want to like people and seek positive attributes. I had not actually put much thought into the idea of other readers truly wanting to like tragic characters despite some of their dreadful deeds. During class discussions, I understood this to be true as I listened to other students comment about their empathy for Clytemnestra’s position and also on their wish to like the unlikeable Vinnie in Mourning Becomes Elektra.

   Prior to the course, I had not noticed that spectacles in tragedy generally take place off stage and are subsequently narrated for the audience. It is interesting that in his Poetics, Aristotle refers to the spectacle in tragedy, a display that on film could manifest a haunting image, as being the “least artistic.” He seems to think this is largely due to the fact that there is only so much spectacular effect that can be created on stage by theater crews. This thought makes sense to me, even in modern times, because there is a limit to what dramatic effects can be produced in a play. In addition, the spectacle is described by the chorus or characters in such a spectacular way that it often exceeds realistic on-stage capabilities.

   The creature that kills Hippolytus is described in Racine’s Phaedra as something so fierce and angry that a reader of current generation can imagine the elaborate special effects this would require for a film version of the text. For this reason, I think it works better for the play that the story of the battle and death of Hippolytus is relayed to his father by another character. A benefit to an off-stage spectacle, other than the audience using their imaginations, is the focus remaining on the pity and terror that spectators feel for characters. Its focus is less about one act or event than it is about the plot, the haunting sequence leading up to the spectacle, and the tragic results. The horror lies in the shocking capabilities of complex characters, not in the action of the actual brutality. In Desire Under the Elms, the audience is dismayed over Abbie’s murdering her baby but O’Neill knew he could potentially lose his audience and that they would hate Abbie more than they pitied her, had they been subjected to the action involved in the infant’s killing. She is neither completely good nor completely bad. She is hopelessly and tragically flawed.

   In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche says Apollo and Dionysus have “artistic powers which spring from nature itself, without mediation of the human artist” (18). Both are artistic imitators but the Apolline is a dream artist and the Dionysiac is an ecstatic artist, and some imitations are both.  I read The Bacchae in a previous class but did not know these opposites are considered dualities who, at the same time, can have overlapping gray areas. They conflict, yet blend, as do characters in tragedy.

   I have learned a lot about the ins and outs of tragedy and its flawed, relatable characters. I found the terms and themes listed in the handouts to be helpful and enlightening for future reading/viewing. The conventions that are listed for genres brought to light interesting and familiar formulas to my experience with stories. My existing knowledge of genres was not nearly as extensive as what we have encountered in this course and frankly, I am relieved to find out that almost all genres overlap with one or more other genres. This makes it easier to accurately define and describe various stories. As stated by Haylie Unger in reference to navigating genres, “I toss away the stone tablet of ‘black and white rules’” (Dr. White, Samples 2010).