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LITR 4370
TRAGEDY
Final Exam Samples 2015 (final exam assignment)
Model Answers to Part 2. |
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Part 2. Complete
"Learning about
Tragedy" Essay: Revise, improve, & extend essay
begun in Midterms 1
& 2 on learning experience
with tragedy, extending to include Hippolytos,
Phaedra, and
Desire Under the Elms. (Revise / improve midterm2 draft & add at least 5 paragraphs
for 12+ paragraph total.)
Eric Anderson
Staying Power: Comparing Tragedy and Comedy
I entered this course with what I'd consider a strong grasp of American
modernist tragedy and comedy but honest inexperience in the territory of ancient
Greek drama and concomitant philosophy. A few months into the semester, I find
myself making connections to books I have read using helpful critical stances
borne out of the western groundwork laid by Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Nietzsche. Studying old tragedies and comedies throughout my undergrad career, I
have come to the conclusion that tragedy holds up better over time. Senses of
humor evolve and mutate year to year, not to mention century to century; and
social climate necessitates unique reactionary comedy. On the other hand,
tragedy remains largely fixed: what is sad and enigmatic in our time—death—is
equally sad and enigmatic in Ancient Greece and all places through all times,
and so interest in the genre persists and expands. This class has taught me that
tragedy, to the exclusion of all its competitors, really is the profoundest
genre.
Comedy, already subjective to the beholder, is tough to pin down. Its
essence, E.B. White explains, is such that it "has a certain fragility, an
evasiveness" (qtd. in "Theories of Comedy"). According to Aristotle, "comedy is
. . . an imitation of characters of a lower type" (Poetics, V). The
audience does not empathize with these lower types because it does not see them
as worthy reflections. Scrutinizing Agamemnon, I was immediately able to
identify and differentiate between Apolline and the Dionysian traits despite my
unfamiliarity with such a literary binary two months prior; however, I could not
spot any great humor in the piece until Dr. White stepped in and provided
context which explained that when the Watchman in the first part of The
Oresteia relaxes on his "arms, just like a dog" (Aeschylus, 5), lowlier
comic type is the implication. And I'm sure the author's coevals understood
this. Centuries later, the simile merely strikes me as playful and salient, not
necessarily comical, and the rift created by this misunderstanding is one main
difference between comedy and tragedy and a reason why the former fades and the
latter tends to survive longer as a genre: death and sadness require no such
explanatory footnote. Some comedy, luckily, did strike a chord with me. Just as
I was tickled by Chaucer's magnificent fart jokes in "the Miller's Tale", I am
pleased to find out that ancient Greeks appreciated lewd humor, as proven by all
the comical erections in Lysistrata (5.5; 5.79).
The relative obscurity of the ribald comedy Lysistrata in the eyes
of posterity is telling, though. Even among the most avid modern readers
familiarity with Lysistrata is rare, whereas the average student is aware
of the Oedipus tales, because the wider social consciousness retains that which
it deems useful or notable. "To learn gives the liveliest pleasure " (Poetics,
IV), and apart from the overly facile—if not completely futile—plea for love
instead of war, and the mechanics and timing of mildly amusing puns which are
the equivalence of lame parlor tricks (3.71; 4.26; 5.79), Lysistrata and
all similarly raunchy comedies offer little in the way of trusty precepts and
divert minds away from contemplation of pressing issues. Lucky to survive as a
dusty academic reference-point to ancient humor, it would be generous in the
extreme to suggest much unique insight can be squeezed from Lysistrata
past a certain point. Like most comedy, it simply delights rather than staggers,
and thus its impact wanes as new fancies earn our passing middle-minded
attention. As a modern American, I can only hope that scholars two thousand from
now will not be examining 21st century Adam Sandler films with the same
anthropological curiosity and fervor. However, my experience in this class leads
me to believe that, should his films somehow survive, future generations will be
as baffled by and alienated from Sandler as any tasteful sane human is today.
Always influenced by zeitgeist, comedy, in its particulars and eccentricities,
soon becomes dated—far too quaint to be as boundless as great ancient tragedy.
Where comedy generally deals with inconsequential ephemeral matters,
tragedy focuses on everlasting matters of life and death close-to-home. I can
imagine and perhaps even live with the idea of murdering a hypothetical stranger
or a far-off enemy; the distance either blunts emotion or provides jingoistic
incentive; war romances thrive on this exact clear us-versus-them mentality.
Good tragedies, however, writes Aristotle, "are founded on the stories of a few
houses" (13c). Whether it is Oedipus committing accidental parricide, Agamemnon
offering his daughter Iphigenia up to the gods, or Christine poisoning her
husband Ezra, it is the intimacy between the killer and the killed that pushes
the violence into the realm of unbearable calamity and "excite[s] pity and fear,
this being the distinctive mark" (Poetics, XIII) of the greatest tragedy.
Of course, I am repulsed by the prospect of killing anyone so close to my heart,
so much so that pondering it too much hurts me and I must stop.
This is because tragedy entails perplexing suffering and forces humanity
to confront the utter misery of life. We understand the humor in an erection or
the sweetness of typical romantic lovers, but cannot so easily grasp the
speculative mystery of intensities such as Antigone's suicide, Oedipus and
Jocasta's incest, or the internecine violence featured in The Oresteia.
Instinctual self-preservation in mind, Jocasta begs Oedipus to stop
"investigating" (Oedipus Rex, 1270) the true nature of his sordid past.
She believes she "will suffer" (1271) if the truth is revealed. Like readers who
bristle at tragedy or reject it completely, she recognizes the magnitude of the
emotion she would have to endure. People in this stubborn camp that refuse to
grow—or in Aristotelian terms undergo the great pleasure of learning—are
self-consigned to incomplete, lukewarm existences. Elderly, returned from exile,
veteran of grief, blind and wise like Tiresias, Oedipus, expressing the taxing
intended effect of tragedy, impresses upon his daughter Antigone that he is
"taught by suffering" (Oedipus at Colonus, 5). Once an unwilling
participant, he has evolved and embraced painful nuance. Romances and comedies
are wishful; tragedies are full of pain, and as Dr White said in the final class
meeting, bolstering Aristotle's didacticism, "Pain is what keeps you from doing
the wrong thing twice." Having tracked the struggles of Oedipus and felt the
characteristic fear and pity best provoked by tragic circumstance, I now better
appreciate the humble transformative trauma of learning.
The main characters of tragedy seize our prolonged attention because in
them is the vigorous representation of human complexity. Comic and romantic
figures fit into clearly demarcated tropes: there's the jolly fat guy and his
hyperactive small friend, the dashing hunk and the beautiful small-town girl.
But in tragedy "no mortal man is ever blessed" (Oedipus Rex, 1431), and
the stakes are hardly so simple. Standing quite apart, tragic figures defy easy
classification and present more realistic psyches. In his Nobel Prize acceptance
speech, modernist tragic novelist William Faulkner—who, following in the
footsteps of Aeschylus and the great dramatists, inflicted classic familial
agony on the Compsons, Snopeses, and Sutpens, to name a few clans—claims that
the only topic truly worth writing about is "the human heart in conflict with
itself". Tragic figures either make tough internal decisions or are subjected to
tough internal suffering regardless of choice. When Agamemnon, caught in that
selfsame conflict of the heart, sacrifices his daughter, he is not taking up the
plain mantle of villainy; he is ensuring the survival of his people by gaining
favorable traveling winds from the gods. Antigone, rebuffed at every turn by
tradition and orders from her superiors, forsakes sedately observed division of
right and wrong when she illegally buries her slain brother Polynices. In the
aftermath, she complies with law's procedure, having transcended boundaries.
Even the lowly guard, used to thinking in simple dichotomies, recognizes the
tender balance Antigone has achieved, claiming: "it's a joy / escaping troubles
which affect oneself, / but painful to bring evil on one's friends" (Antigone,
493-5). However, "tragedy does not always have to be dark" (Hollen), as
epitomized by Antigone's brave rebellion and again by the restoration of peace
and order in the final part of The Oresteia. External forces may
warrant curiosity, but externality causes disengagement which disincentives the
introspection tragedy aims to provoke. Certainly complex and perhaps
unpalatable, tragedy makes the audience contemplate the singular inward
potential for both good and evil (Antigone, 417).
Another reason tragedy survives is the larger-than-life characters whom
the audience considers worthy of imitation and respect. The audience seeks
improvement in mirroring the behavior of the heroes since they are depicted as
"better than in actual life" (Poetics, II). Given the opportunity, we
would rather become stately, influential, brave, and noble—like Oedipus,
Antigone, Agamemnon, and Orestes—than aloof, lowly, and undignified—like the
forgettable Watchman in Agamemnon or the galling jokesters in
Lysistrata. Suffering admirably against all odds, acting beyond
insular self-interest, representative of society's values, tragic heroes, warts
and all, earn reputations as eminent synecdoches. Their stories register with
us, packing the varied enigmatic punch known as catharsis. We "feel an
enlargement before great or good work, an expansion," explains the renowned poet
William Carlos Williams, because "it gives the feeling of completion by
revealing the oneness of experience" (The Collected Poems, 194). While
entertaining to an extent, comedic and romantic figures, rather than prompt
growth and essential illumination, reinforce unadventurous preconceptions.
Aristotle would likely agree that great tragic figures "rouse rather than
stupefy the intelligence" (Williams, 194).
Nietzsche excoriates Euripides as the harbinger of the death of tragedy.
Demoted "to Hades," where one devours their "fill of the old masters crumbs"
(Nietzsche, 54), Euripides leaves us with a warped arena where the "degenerate
figure of tragedy live[s] on" (55). It is in this space that Hippolytos
exists. "Plot . . . is the soul of tragedy" (Poetics, 6e), and the plot
of Hippolytos is disturbingly slack, unintuitive, and rushed: the Chorus
over-explains, and the storyline, rather than proceed linearly, ties itself in
knots in a rush to clarify obscurities; the revelation of the tablet nearly
beggars our good belief. The playing-ground between nobility and servants is
leveled and muddied, as signified by the wily Nurse, who commands much of the
play's attention, especially in the third scene when she is able to converse
swiftly with Phaedra. "Human life is made of pain" bemoans the Chorus (3.71),
but Hippolytos, heaped lamely in a broken pile on the rocks, garners neither our
pity nor our reflection. Insufficiently mesmerized, thanks in part to the
haphazard plotting and destabilization of hierarchy, our class laughed at poor
Hippolytos, likening him to an unlucky cripple from the modern comedy program
Archer. Euripides intended tragedy but the product, inspiring only middling
emotion, is strangely suspended between tragedy and comedy. Dr. White deems this
phenomenon "the forerunner of the sit-com" (lecture notes Hippolytos), the
artform most bastardized, meant for the lowest-common-denominator or the
"bourgeois mediocrity" (Nietzsche, 56) which we know Euripides, popular as he
was, pandered to.
With Phaedra, the 17th-century French playwright Jean Baptiste
Racine echoes and revamps the Hippolytos-Phaedra story. The invocations to and
mentions of Roman gods and goddesses such as Neptune (682) and Minerva (397)
bespeak modernized sensibilities quite separate from traditional Greek
mythology. The worldly force of love, its variations mentioned throughout the
play at least five dozen times, drives the play despite the theistic overtones
which might otherwise bring to mind traditional impetuses like Fate. Racine
notably eliminates the chorus, an old standby. Assuaging strained modern
suspensions of disbelief, choral responsibilities are interwoven into the lines
of the minor characters such as Panope (361-370). Among the selections assigned
for this class, Racine is unique in his manifold portraiture of multiple
complicated female characters. Only Sophocles's Antigone can compare to the
depth and dimension of the intensely pitiful Phaedra (668). Moreover, Racine's
version of Phaedra's attendant nurse has a name: Oenone, and her upright
temperament and introspection (1391-1402), which serve to democratize and
elevate a representative of a lower class strata, is a divergence from the
lowdown wisecracking Euripidean model (Hippolytos, 3.18). Fashioned anew,
the Aricia figure is an alteration, a romantic outlet for Hippolytos, whose
"heart and soul" (1278) belong to her.
If Euripodes slaughtered tragedy, Eugene O'Neill resurrected it—with a
twist. "You don't have to write about extraordinary people who accomplish
extraordinary and memorable deeds" (epigraph of Call If You Need Me),
writes Raymond Carver, paraphrasing a piece of advice found in a letter written
by Anton Chekhov, whose peasant-obsessed short fiction inspired Carver to write
similar stories of soul-crushing blue-collar existence. Following this tack in
his modification of the Hippolytos-Phaedra story, O'Neill, in Desire Under
the Elms, jettisons the traditional subject of royalty and instead focuses
on dignifying exceedingly ordinary American farmer types. In keeping with
Aristotelean standards, however, brothers Simeon and Peter, as well as old
Cabot, are recognizable as amusing characters of a lower type: clumsy, they "bump
and rub together" (5) as they pursue bacon—food is a classic guarantor of
comedy—and nearing middle-age they still sleep in bunk-beds like little children
(11); and Cabot, ancient and out-of-place as Tiresias, dances lively and quickly
"like a monkey" (47). But O'Neill differentiates Eben from these
aforementioned goofs. Had our main character, a relatively unsophisticated
agrarian, existed in a Greek tragedy at the genre's ancient height, he would
have been a lowly stock character; and even as recent as Shakespeare's time he
would be termed a countryside clown, a rustic worthy of only peripheral
scrutiny. Democratized by O'Neill, Eben's distress is equal to—and perhaps
greater than—King Oedipus or any other Greek hero when, devil-may-care, he dares
God to "strike [him] t' hell!" (52). O'Neill further modernizes tragedy by
abandoning refined poesy and introducing rough phonetic speech patterns found
across all hierarchal occupations, including the powerful Sheriff from the final
pages And it is, like the title suggests, desire, rather than fate or the gods,
that precipitates the tragedy, each disparate catalyst as uncontrollable as the
other. By ennobling common people, O'Neill ennobles the reader and extends
ownership of true heartbreaking tragedy to all—no distinctions, no caveats.
Death, the focus of tragedy and the universal end which we all share,
remains an obsession to this day. Humanity can neither solve it nor get shut of
it. A persistent mystery, it triggers the extremest pity and fear. Learning
being the greatest pleasure, we are denied by death because it does not divulge
its secrets. Antigone hangs herself, and thousand plus years later Hamlet is
still asking the most fundamental question: "To be or not to be" (Shakespeare,
3.1.58). The morbid curiosity furthermore reverberates into the 20th century.
Mourning Becomes Electra is nothing if not an American modernization
of the classics written by Aeschylus. Then there's William Faulkner's novel
Absalom, Absalom!, a tragedy wherein a suicidal daughter significantly named
Clytemnestra is just one of the doomed branches on the Sutpen family tree. Along
with cultivated interest in the Greek classics and these updates from Racine and
O'Neill and beyond, we have an indication: a desperate attempt to understand the
human condition and grasp the enormity of life and death. Where comedy recedes
into a cultural oddity, tragedy precludes any reduction of gravity.
We
flock towards comedy as comforting temporary respite from the truth. We indulge
in romance because we wish a narrative so agreeable and clearcut could
replace the truth. We initially shy away from tragedy because it refuses to
sugarcoat the brutal truth, but come to learn that it presents humanity for what
it really is, both triumphant and piteous. The frustration, the very
irreducibility of universal and inscrutable themes, is precisely what makes it a
worthwhile object of study. Tragically, tragedy is here to stay.
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