final exam assignment

LITR 4533 TRAGEDY  Final Exam Samples 2014 (final exam assignment) Essay 2: Special Topics "A blend of Tragedy and its Updates [topic 1] and Teaching Tragedy [topic 9]"

Mickey Thames

Making the Oedipal Modern: How Updated Tragedy Bridges The Gap

I previously remarked on the extended update of an update, comparing the changes from Oedipus Rex to Hamlet, and finally with the very modern The Lion King, to see what about the stories changed, what remained the same, and how the different emphasis changed the nature of the story. What emerged was a stronger emphasis on the relationship between the father and the son, and a lessening of the relationship with the mother. And while The Lion King is a fantastic movie, and would serve a good intro to the plot of Hamlet, it doesn’t allow for the same exploration into that relationship with a mother figure.

To facilitate a stronger discussion about mother figures in a classroom, I would need to shift focus to another in a series of three, the Hippolytus- Phaedra - Desire Under the Elms cycle. Where The Lion King drops the ball when it comes to the mother, Desire Under the Elms remains true to the spirit of its predecessors, even enflaming the relationship of the younger man to a mother figure.

Hippolytus, in his original form, is a sort of pure, virginal character devoted to an ideal. This contrasts with Phaedra, who, in her passion, makes irreversible mistakes and causes the death of the object of her desires. While sympathetic, she is still quite a bit simpler than the successor to the story and her name, Racine’s Phaedra. It is with Racine’s update that this story becomes much more teachable, at least to high school kids, as I’ve mentioned I will be teaching before.

Racine’s Phaedra has the added ingredient that all young adults find irresistible- a good romantic triangle! With Hippolytus pulled between Aricia and the advances of Phaedra, we find him much more sympathetic and relatable. He is unable to consummate a relationship with either of them, the one because she is the daughter of an enemy, and the other because she is his father’s wife. It also adds to the play’s accessibility because of the introduction of Aricia’s interactions with her nurse, a scene between two women that was not in the previous iteration. While still somewhat out of date in terms of modern gender equality, Racine gives the Hippolytus story a very important springboard into the modern use.

Finally, there’s the cherry on top, Desire Under the Elms. This is easily the most teachable play amongst the three, and takes the relationship of the mother figure and the son to scorching new places that are easy attention getters. With the play no longer taking place in the high courts of Athens, but down home farms. High-falutin’ language takes a backseat to grammar that is fun to read aloud, and more accurately captures emotions of the passionate. And there is always the steamy scenes of an Oedipal Conflict that finally gets consummated, though not in a happy way. The small number of characters makes the story easy to follow, and the triangle of lovers remains the central aspect of the play. What also emerges is the possible effects of an Oedipal Conflict that is consummated, something we have not seen since Oedipus Rex himself, and the effects are, to say the least, unsavory. With an abundance of material available, and no need to translate the original text, Desire stands tall as the most teachable of the modern Oedipal Conflicts.