LITR 4370 TRAGEDY Midterm1 Samples 2015 (midterm assignment) Model Answers to Part 2. Learning Essay 1.

2. Write opening draft of Essay 1 (overall learning experience) on final exam (3-4 paragraphs, 1.5-2 double-spaced page equivalent)

Authors & titles (scroll down for essays):

Eric Anderson, Staying Power: Comparing Tragedy and Comedy

Shelby Hollen, Tragedy gets Personal

Kaitlin Jaschek, Tragedy is Real and Relatable

Nona Olivarez, Where Tragedy Arises True Wisdom Is Sure To Follow

Andrew Ridenour, Tragedy Ying and Comedy Yang

Sarah Robin Roelse, Tragedy:  A Whole New World, A Place I Never Knew

Emilie White, Reality Is a Tragedy

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 realm of ancient Greek drama and concomitant philosophy. Two 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, Nietzsche, and Aeschylus. After studying old tragedies and comedies throughout my undergrad career, I have come to the general 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 in our time—death—is equally sad in Ancient Greece and all places through all times. Death, the universal end which we all share, is what establishes tragedy as the profoundest, inscrutable genre.

            Comedy, already subjective to the beholder, is tough to pin down. Aristotle says "comedy is . . . an imitation of characters of a lower type" (Poetics, V) and the audience does not empathize with them because they do not see them as worthy reflections; rather, the audience seeks improvement in mirroring the behavior of characters in tragedy because they are portrayed as "better than in actual life" (Poetics, II)—something to aspire to. E.B. White says the genre "has a certain fragility, an evasiveness" ("Theories of Comedy"). In scrutinizing Agamemnon, I was immediately able to identify and differentiate between Apollonian and the Dionysian traits despite my unfamiliarity with such a literary binary two months prior; however, I could not spot any great humor in either 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. (On the other hand, death and tragedy require no explanatory footnote.) I'm sure the author's coevals understood this. Centuries later, that simile merely strikes me as playful and salient, not necessarily comical. Some comedy, luckily, did strike a chord with me. Just as I was tickled by Chaucer's magnificent fart joke in "The Miller's Tale", I am beyond pleased to discover that ancient Greeks found solace in lewd humor, as proven by all the comical erections in Lysistrata.

            Where comedy generally deals with inconsequential matters, Tragedy is focused on life and death matters. Good tragedies, writes Aristotle, "are founded on the stories of a few houses" (13c) and should "excite pity or fear, this being the mark of tragic imitation" (XIII). The Oresteia and Mourning Becomes Electra qualify, then, are quintessential Aristotelian tragedies, centering on noble war hero-led families which are representative of society's values. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, modernist tragic novelist William Faulkner—who, following in the footsteps of Aeschylus and Shakespeare, inflicted classic familial agony on the Compsons, Bundrens, Snopeses, and Sutpens, to name a few clans—proclaims that the only topic truly worth writing about is "the human heart in conflict with itself" ("Banquet Speech"). Eventually, the erections of comedy subside and we all laugh and move on, unhurt. But when Agamemnon, caught in that selfsame conflict of the heart, decides for the great good to sacrifice his own daughter Iphigenia, he cannot escape the fatal chain-reaction he has prompted. True to mimesis, Agamemnon, neither exclusively bad nor exclusively good, represents the muddier complexity of tragedy as a genre compared to all its competitors. If tragedy is truly meant to instruct as well as entertain, then we humans must not be heeding Aristotle's strictures, for brand new tragedies emerge again and again, different names occupying more or less the same dramatic form and arc. Mourning Becomes Electra is, after all, a clear American analogue to The Oresteia.

            Patterns indicate that certain violent foibles are all too common. Yet we humans ardently pore over the lines of tragedy, as if we have missed some secret sign which could purify us forever. Comedy is a welcomed diversion, yes, but only intermittently when the search for true transcendence is halted. The frustration, the very irreducibility of universal and inscrutable themes, is precisely what makes tragedy a worthwhile object of study. Tragically, tragedy is here to stay.  

Shelby Hollen

Tragedy gets Personal

Before I took this course I thought tragedy was going to be all about the bad things that happen to people, or that people in the past have done. I did not view tragedy as being humorous, just plain right sad and depressing. Which is one of the reasons why I wanted to take this class. I knew there had to be more to what tragedy is than just depressing stories about how someone killed someone else. Not to my surprise I was right, there is so much more to tragedy than just sorrow.

            One thing that I have learned so far in this class is how well I can relate to the stories. I never would have thought before taking this class that I would relate as easily to tragedy, I do not view myself as a tragic person honestly. But once I started reading all the different plays I realized that everyone could relate to tragedy. Tragedy is about loss, pain, and coping, which is something that everyone has gone through at some point in their lives if not more than one time.

            I have heard of some of the plays we have read in class before, like Agamemnon, but not actually read it myself. I am glad this was the first play we were assigned to read actually. It was something I really did not know anything about, I had heard of it but was not aware of how it would turn out. I must admit there were certain parts in the play that I had to close my jaw while reading. For example, when Agamemnon had to kill his daughter in the beginning, yes this was a tragedy; a parent never wishes to live to see their child die. But even in this tragic moment I learned that he was being a hero in a sense at the same time. He had to kill his own flesh in blood but in return saved many more as well.

            When it comes to tragedy it does not always have to be dark. For example, in Mourning Becomes Electra, I personally thought this story was a more detailed but lighter version of Agamemnon. While reading this play I saw it in a new light. I thought that the killing of Ezra was more of a crime of passion in love than just revenge. When reading it in Agamemnon I felt that the murder was more revenge than out of love. Now that I am reading more tragedy I am learning that the tragic event is done as a consequence or retaliation. This class has started to teach me to look more in depth at the characters, before I viewed tragedy as the bad guy, there was always a bad guy who was going to come in and ruin something for some reason, in result causing a tragedy. But I was wrong, there really is not a bad guy in tragedy just humans.

            One thing that I have learned so far in this class is how well I can relate to the stories. I never would have thought before taking this class that I would relate as easily to tragedy, I do not view myself as a tragic person honestly. But once I started reading all the different plays I realized that everyone could relate to tragedy. Tragedy is about loss, pain, and coping, which is something that everyone has gone through at some point in their lives if not more than one time.

Kaitlin Jaschek

Tragedy is Real and Relatable

            To be honest, when I first signed up for the class I didn’t know what Tragedy would be about or what to expect, all I knew is it was a literature class.  Of course, the first thing that came to mind was Romeo and Juliet because that was the only tragic piece of literature I remembered from high school, other than that I was unfamiliar with Tragedy.  My preconceived thoughts about the class was it would be a lot of boring and difficult to understand reading due to the language, because that is how I remembered classic literature.  Also, I recall not understanding what the purpose of reading this type of literature or poetry was, how did it relate to my life?  There was no room for interpretation, but a right and wrong answer, and I always struggled to comprehend what the right answer was.     

            I am thrilled to announce that through this experience thus far I have come to learn, understand, and enjoy Tragedy.  In addition, I have been able to make connections, destroying my preconceived and recalling memories of literature; thus, seeing tragedy as real and relatable.  Tragedy, in common speech, usually describes an unfortunate event or end to a life story, especially when the event is undeserved, an example, “a tragic accident” (Mr. White’s Website).  However, in literary criticism, the concept is much more complicated, it raises questions about justice and morality for individuals and the world (Mr. White’s Website). 

I have learned that Tragedy is real life because it displays the imperfections of humans, the character is not always good or always bad they are a mixture, and at times they are in predicaments that lead to hard decisions and/or consequences.  An example of this is in Agamemnon, he is a “noble” character, the king, yet is put in a situation where he must choose whether to kill his daughter for the sake of his kingdom.  It’s tragic because he obviously doesn’t want to kill his daughter, but also has a responsibility as king to his country; therefore, chooses to sacrifice his daughter.  This decision excites pity and fear for what is to come to Agamemnon due to killing his daughter.  His wife, Clytemnestra, does end up getting revenge because of the hate in her heart for the man who killed her daughter.  Although we normally as humans, not in royalty, don’t have to that extreme of decisions to make we do however come across difficult choices: to forgive someone who killed a family member while drinking and driving, to have a baby when both the mother and child will perish, to pull the plug or hold off with hope, or to blame God for the evils we’ve experienced. 

These tragedies look different, but the human emotions are real: pain, grief, bitterness, and revenge.  In my opinion, tragedy gives us permission and shows it is normal to feel pain and to grieve yet also offers an outside perspective of what can happen if we continue to be bitter or seek revenge due to the tragedies in our lives.  “Character determines men’s qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse” (Aristotle’s Poetics VI 6D).  Once Clytemnestra took action and got her revenge on Agamemnon, you see that her actions led her to the reverse of being happy or satisfied; instead, she was fearful and concerned, having nightmares of her own death.  This theme of revenge carries out throughout the Oresteia trilogy until the last act in Euminides when the Furies decided to not get revenge, realizing that doing something nice, forgiving, was much more rewarding than revenge ever offered.  I believe this teaches readers such a great lesson- where there was bitterness and revenge there was death, but where there was forgiveness there was satisfaction.

I’ve learned not only is Tragedy real, Tragedy is also relatable because we can see ourselves in the characters.  Like I mentioned earlier, Tragedy imitates real life more than other genres, because it represents characters as mixtures of good and evil- like you and me (Mr. White’s Website). Apollo and Dionysus, are a good picture or representation of the conflicts within humans, “these two very different tendencies walk side by side, inciting one another to ever more powerful births” (Birth of Tragedy, 14).  Tragedy does not allow us to “escape” our problems or feel assured that everything always turns out for the best; instead, it shows us that sometimes evil does prevail or bad things happen, but it helps us determine how we will navigate or respond to those evils. 

Tragedy and Comedy brings us together, because both of them make us feel immensely human (Chelsea Stansell).  Tragedy compared or mixed comedy is completely relatable to us as humans; because although we experience tragedies, we also experience joy and laughter.  According to Aristotle’s Poetics, the characters of Comedy are of a lower type than the royalty of classical Tragedy.  This lower type in comedy or humor, allows one to make a spectacle of oneself, giving a lighter feeling to the heaviness of tragedy. 

Nona Olivarez

Where Tragedy Arises True Wisdom Is Sure To Follow

            When enrolling in the course Tragedy, I have to admit I was not looking forward to the reading material or what the content of the class contained, or at least what I thought it contained. My previous notions of Tragedy led me to believe that the reading material would be filled with “sad” endings, and this misunderstanding made me feel more than hesitant to sign up since I believe we get enough tragic occurrences in real life.  However, I am now proud to admit that my previous understanding of what Tragedy means is completely wrong, and the reading materials are not just “sad” but beautifully complex and relatable BECAUSE of their trueness to real life.

            I’ve learned a remarkable amount in just the first four or five weeks of this course that I think an easier question might be: what haven’t I learned? The way in which the course site is set up allows me, as a student, to easily move through tons of information with just a click of the mouse, all the answers readily available. To begin, I’ve learned that Tragedy is not just full of gore, violence, and betrayal as I previously believed. In fact, as Scott Agruso mentions in his essay, “Agamemnon is stabbed off-stage and the only immediate indication of death is brought through a scream off-stage”. Aeschylus does not make a spectacle of Agamemnon’s death, instead, the audience is told about the murder through verse and the image of Clytemnestra splattered with blood, which is hardly very gory compared to the many mainstream horror movies seen today. This lack of a spectacle, to me at least, made the scene all the more powerful because we are left to our own imagination to picture how the murder took place. While Tragedy does contain violence, the violence isn’t always brutal and full of gore. For example in the play by O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra, when Christine gives her husband, Ezra, a poisonous pill instead of his much needed medication lacks carnage but feels real because the passion and emotion of the character adheres itself to the reader. I felt engrossed when reading the murder scene of Ezra Mannon and at the end of the scene I felt highly disappointed we weren’t reading further. Also and probably most significantly, I’ve learned Tragedies do not necessarily have “sad” endings. Dr. White’s course website states, “Tragedy ends with the resolution of the problem and the restoration of justice, often accompanied by the death, banishment, or quieting of the tragic hero”. An example of this is at the end of the Oresteia trilogy in the final play Euminides when the character Orestes is acquitted of the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra, by the god Athena and all is restored to how it should be, quite the opposite of a “sad” ending.

            Mimesis is a familiar concept to me as I’ve heard the phrase “monkey see, monkey do” for as I long as I can remember. However I never knew the term mimesis was just another form of imitation, more specifically “imitation of the real world in (a work of) art, literature, etc” (Dr. White’s Website). The idea of mimeses in literature became apparent to me when we read the Oresteia trilogy and then right after read the play, Mourning Becomes Electra. O’Neill’s play is a direct representation of the play Agamemnon.  Christine is Clytemnestra, Ezra Mannon is Agamemnon, Lavinia is Electra, and so forth. Imitation is extremely important because through imitating others, like our parents, we learn all the way from birth to death and the true purpose of tragedy, of course, is to learn.

            Reading Tragedy is a learning process in itself, and from Tragedy we are able to learn immensely about real life, like that people act both good and bad and that sometimes the greatest wisdom comes from the most tragic of moments. As Aeschylus so eloquently stated in Agamemnon, “wisdom comes through suffering”.

Andrew Ridenour

Tragedy Ying and Comedy Yang

            What I have come to understand more than anything else in this course, is that the literary genres of tragedy and comedy have an unbreakable bond that makes them one. In the past I have always looked at them as opposites, one had nothing to do with the other. I even had a teacher in grade school who told me that “when it comes to plays, you either loved it or you hated it.” This has always been my mindset on the subject. However, after beginning this course, I find that neither comedy, nor tragedy can live without the other, and in both, the presence of the other can be found. They are very much like the odd couples that we always see in the cinema, in which the boy is all fun, and the girl is all work, but for some reason, things always turn out better when they’re together.

            Aristotle, in his Poetics, when describing comedy and tragedy stated, “Comedy aims at representing men as worse and Tragedy as better than in actual life.”- Aristotle, The Poetics, #II. “Comedy is… an imitation of character of a lower type… It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive.”- Aristotle, The Poetics, #V. “Tragedy… is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude…; in the form of action, not of narrative, through pity and fear.”- Aristotle, The Poetics, #VI. Everything discussed from Aristotle’s Poetics seems to place comedy and tragedy on opposite ends of the spectrum with absolutely no ties whatsoever. However, Aristotle did make a point that brings everything together. “Epic poetry and tragedy, comedy also… are all in their general conception modes of imitation.”- Aristotle, the Poetics, #I.

            The question now is, “So what does that mean?” Simply put, comedy and tragedy are both acted out on stage. Comedy and tragedy are actions. Actions cannot produce themselves. Something, or more likely, someone has to make those actions whether comedic or tragic. Thus, if someone wants to see comedy or tragedy, he or she needs to watch someone else demonstrate, or imitate, it for them. The only way comedy and tragedy live is because they are acted out by imitators, or actors.

            Thus, comedy and tragedy live. The next question is, “What do they have to do with each other?” Comedy and tragedy are genres of literature and art. Since there is no such thing as a “pure genre” it is only natural that comedy has a little tragedy in it, and tragedy has a little comedy in it. This is possible, and in fact practical, because, in real life man carries the qualities of both comedy and tragedy with him at all times. Wit and humor are typically thought to be comic, and pain and suffering is often thought to be tragic. However, one can easily notice that in Agamemnon (part 1 of the Oresteia Trilogy) Queen Clytaemnestra uses wit and suspense (comedic) to quickly come up with an excuse for the chorus as to how she knows that Troy has fallen, and in Lysistrata, one can easily take note of the fact that the Greeks are at war (tragic).

Agamemnon is commonly thought of as a tragedy, and Lysistrata a comedy, but shown here as a sample, in the above paragraph, is definite proof that comedy is found in tragedy, and tragedy is found in comedy. Like the Chinese Ying and Yang, comedy and tragedy are always found together.

Sarah Robin Roelse

Tragedy:  A Whole New World, A Place I Never Knew

            As a person who has a generally good understanding of tragedy before coming into Dr. White’s class, I felt like the class would be a breeze – boy, was I ignorant.  To preface my writing, I am a student who has a theater degree, so I automatically expect myself to be ahead of the game when it comes to classical literature, tragedy, comedy, and dare I say it – Shakespeare; however, throughout the first portion of our semester, I have been floored by all of the new insights from Nietzsche, Aristotle, and even Eugene O’Neill, a more modern playwright who has taken on the revolutionary Agamemnon and Oresteia trilogy and made it relevant to our society.
            At first glance, I thought that this course on tragedy would be similar to a theater course I had taken many years ago where we stuck strictly to reading plays that were classical literature, discussing them in class, and finally writing essays about how each reading had changed our lives or made us feel in that particular moment.  I, being a former student of Dr. White, should have known that we would delve deeper into the context of these classical plays, which I feel like I am reading for the twelfth time, and actually learn about them – not only from what our peers have to say about the reading, but what great thinkers have written about the literature itself, they have analyzed, deconstructed, and devoured every bits of these plays in order for future generations (us) to have a solidified understanding of how tragedy is, as Melissa South perfectly wrote, “the truths that mankind hides within themselves or within the confines of their homes.”
            Upon reading Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, I was completely lost (to be completely honest, philosophy doesn’t generally mix well with grounded, literal thinkers – to be frank, philosophy is a word that makes my head spin because the ideas seem to do the same), but during class teaching from Vicky Webb, general discussion, and severe explanations from Dr. White, I am now better able to understand and explain ideas such as “the ideal spectator” and the “Apollonian vs. Dionysian” debate and how we really can’t have one without the other in terms of literary purpose because it would be too much of a sensory overload. An example of this “Apollonian vs. Dionysian” debate can be seen in our reading of O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra, where we have an equal sense of tragedy and comedy coming to us throughout the play – while there is murder and revenge killings, there is also a relatively happy ending where Orestes is set free on a split trial vote.  In simpler terms, the debate can be said as such:  too much good is bad, too much bad is bad, but intertwining the two is the optimal way to write a tragedy.  Even in plays such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet there are designated characters for comedic relief so that the watcher, reader, or general audience doesn’t become too overwhelmed by what madness and character destruction is happening throughout the play.
            In Aristotle’s Poetics, he explains that, “tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear or pity,” but that does not constitute tragedy being comprised of wholly “tragic” events. According to William Hazlitt’s “On Wit and Humor,” humor “is an imitation of the natural or acquired absurdities of mankind, or of the ludicrous in accident, situation, and character.”  In class, upon reading Lysistrata, we have seen this juxtaposition or combination of comedy and tragedy, where a group of women have banded together in order to stop the war because they are feeling sex-deprived (while this is not what the story is completely surrounded upon, it touches the reader by making the characters real and vulnerable from their situations, i.e. we could compare this to current day issues of men fighting in the Afghani War, leaving their women behind).
            While I have not touched on every piece that we have covered in class up to this point, I feel that there is still so much to learn that will tie into what we have already acknowledged in class; I know that there is never a time in Dr. White’s class where we don’t make connections between our readings, so I can say fairly that I do not want to give away any spoilers to taking the class.  In order to learn more about tragedy, you will need to stick closely to our class page or enroll in it for yourself!

Emilie White

Reality Is a Tragedy

            My first thought when I hear the word ‘tragedy’ is that something terrible has happened and that it has caused a great injustice or is deemed unfair. This is an accurate use of the word, but it doesn’t fully explain what a tragedy is in the literary genre.

            In the literary genre, a tragedy like Agamemnon has the hero of the story killing his daughter to appease Artemis, a goddess, so that he may win the war against Troy. Agamemnon is neither wholly good nor wholly evil. Most people would agree that killing your child makes you bad, but he didn’t want to kill her. It was something he was very upset about doing, but he knew it had to be done for the well being of his land and its entire people. Agamemnon wins the war and comes home a hero, only to be killed by his wife as she takes revenge for her daughter’s death. His story fits the theme of a tragedy because the death of the tragic hero brings about a sense of justice for his actions against his daughter.

            Aristotle’s Poetics defines tragedy as having the heroes being portrayed as better than they are in actual life (II). The men of tragedies are noble men and face dangerous threats. This concept is evident in the Oresteia trilogy. Agamemnon must protect his land and his people in the first play. The Furies haunt Clytemnestra in her dreams and the Furies chase Orestes after he kills his mother in The Libation Bearers. In The Eumenides, Orestes faces Athena and a jury to determine his fate against the wrath of the Furies. Tragedies aren’t meant to be an escape for the audience. Tragedies teach lessons about life.

            Staying true to the definition offered in Aristotle’s Poetics, comedies represent men as worse than they truly are (II). This is especially true in “low” and physical comedy. High comedy uses wit and words to offer up humorous lines and anecdotes. In Lysistrata, the Magistrate and the Ambassador are two characters that offer the audience high comedy. Both characters are high ranking and use wit and words to display their humor. The chorus members use physical comedy for their humor. The play also follows the narrative of comedy expectations by having all of the characters united in a dance at the end of the storyline.

            Comedies serve as a relief and escape from reality and the many hardships people face on a daily basis. However, tragedies are a great teaching tool. I agree with Theresa Box’s statement that exposing students to a work in tragedy “can show [them] that in life not all things are black and white, sometimes the lines between good and bad [are] blurred and [they need] to learn how to think critically in order to decipher between [the two].”