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LITR 4370
TRAGEDY
Midterm1 Samples 2015 (midterm1 assignment)
Model Answers to
Part 3.
Research Report 1 (proposal) |
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3. Review or preview your choice of Special Topics for semester-long Research Report, to be developed in Midterm2 and concluded in Final Exam. (3-4 paragraphs, 1.5-2 double-spaced page equivalent)
Authors & titles (scroll down for essays):
Alejandra Ayala, A More Effective Way To Teach Tragedy to High School Students
Dylan Chachere, Self
Generated Topic: Tragedy in the Courtroom
Karissa
Guerrero, The Spectacle, Including the Sublime, within the
Tragedy Realm
Kaitlin Jaschek,
Michael McDonald,
Tragedy’s Fatal Flaw
Anahi Montemayor,
Teaching
Tragedy in a High School Classroom
Nona Olivarez,
Family Problems: We All Have Them
Victoria Webb,
Tragedy is not Tragedy without a Spectacle
Alejandra Ayala
February 22, 2015
A More Effective Way To
Teach Tragedy to High School Students
I feel like I have learned a lot about Tragedy in this class and other
literature classes I have previously taken in community college. As a future
high school English teacher, I tend to think about ways I would like to teach my
future students while I’m learning the material myself. I make mental notes of
different techniques my professors use that I would like to use in my future
classroom. One thing I noticed that is prominent in most of my previous classes
is showing or mentioning modernized books or movies of the readings we are to
use in my future classroom.
Tragedy can be extremely difficult to teach because students tend to be
closed-minded about the meaning of tragedy. Most students believe tragedy is
always depressing and filled with deaths but tragedy is much more than just
that. Tragedy has various elements to it than just death. Tragedies that I had
to read when I was in high school, consisted of
Hamlet, The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet.
However, they were simpler versions of the actual stories, summaries that only
gave the main points, to where we did not have to analyze as much compared to
the original stories and formats. Even then, fellow students dreaded and were
uninterested in these readings that they did not learn much or appreciate the
stories. Most students found these readings as a waste of time or pointless.
I am very passionate about literature; I love to read and learn about
books I normally would not choose myself. As a future educator, my goal is to
make literature—no matter what the genre or style—as fun and enjoyable as
possible. Knowing most students do not enjoy tragedy or stories such as the ones
I had to read in high school, I would approach teaching tragedy through a
different approach; I would have students read parts of original text, like the
ones we have read so far in class, such as,
Agamemnon,
as well as
have them read modernized versions of the original text for students to
better understand the story.
Mourning
Becomes Electra is a great updated version of
Agamemnon, it was, in my opinion, an
easy read and more enjoyable compared to Agamemnon. Although using updated versions of original tragedies
help students comprehend the story better, I think it is important to show parts
of, if not all of, the original tragedies. Having students only read modernized
version will, in my opinion, take away from classic tragedies. I will teach my
future students what elements make stories a tragedy and then have them give me
examples of recent movies or books that could be considered as tragic in order
to help the understand tragedy.
Dylan Chachere
LITR 4370 Tragedy
Self Generated Topic: Tragedy in the Courtroom
As discussed in earlier classes this semester, I entertained the idea of
the Apollonian and Dionysiac relationship that might exist in a court room or a
trial. For this semester-long paper
I would like to explore the similarities of tragedy and performance in court
rooms.
For example, say there is a typical trial with a defendant and
prosecution, and speculating on what both sides bring to knowledge are the judge
and the jury. Would it be possible
to establish that in a sense an entire trial is much like one big performance?
The lawyers both defending and prosecuting in a case are like the chorus,
whom give exposition of sequences of events and what they observe or believe to
be the circumstances which brought said case trial, and the witness and the
defense the are key characters who will provide and demonstrate what is felt
necessary to show to their audience, the jury.
Meanwhile the judge sits over the case as both audience and authority,
with the near absolute power to determine what is permissible to demonstrate
what can be shown to the jury.
When I first brought up the possibility of Apollonian and Dyonisiac
elements in a court room I did so thinking that the Apollonian is the element of
order in the court room, since the Apollonian stands for “Moral excellence”
since after all, Apollo is a god of justice according to the course site.
This order attempts to do battle with the Dyonisiac, the element of
disorder. Arguably, since according
to the course site the Dionysiac is the individualized form of Apollonian,
“immersion of the individual into the whole of society or nature,” or bringing
form to the formless, the two must battle out to meet certain equilibrium
acceptable to the audience, or the jury.
One example that could fit perfectly in all of this is the play
Inherit The Wind, which was adapted to
film. In this production the central
story line revolves around an early twentieth century trial in the southern
United States, where a science teacher is arrested and brought to trial for
breaking a law which makes it unlawful to teach the theory of evolution in a
bible community. The prosecution and
defense battle it out over whether said teacher should be fined and imprisoned
over what is being argued over as an unjust law.
This once again brings to mind the search for equilibrium between
Apollonian and Dionysiac, since the Apollonian order in this case seeks to
silence what the defending characters discuss was not a breach of law, but the
individual’s right to express his thoughts and beliefs.
As the Dyonisac declares, it is itself the celebration of form in the
formless, the individual in the whole.
To bring this proposal to a close, once more the justice system seems to
demonstrate the battle of society’s standards against the individual’s immoral
acts, or what are considered to be immoral acts, and each person involved in the
courtrooms fulfill certain roles to demonstrate what is being fought for and
what these circumstances mean to the collective audience in the ongoing battle
between order and chaos.
Karissa
Guerrero
22
February 2015
The Spectacle, Including the Sublime, within the
Tragedy Realm
The tragedy genre has been named the greatest and most profound genre,
however many find this genre the most difficult to grasp and fully understand
when it comes to literature. Anyone can sit around and speak about tragedy in
their everyday lives, they may even be able to talk freely about a tragic scene
in a movie or a modern book. They might say that tragedy is when you lose
someone or something at an unexpected time, or maybe they would explain a car
accident they passed on the freeway while heading to work and label it a
tragedy. Most in today’s society would say that tragedy is an emotion that is
caused by some physical action. However, if you ask them what the tragedy genre
is through the literature world, specifically in Greek plays, you may get blank
stares, or responses as listed above. In literature tragedy is the question of
morality within a person or the world. Classical tragedy literature, as stated
on the course webpage, “[…] depicts actions and their serious consequences.”
This means that instead of only looking at the losses gained by the tragedy,
classical literature looks at the actions that lead up to this tragedy, and as a
result of those actions there were serious consequences put into place, the
tragedy. There is more to tragedy than just the heart wrenching journey, part of
tragedy involves the spectacle and the sublime.
A spectacle, according to today’s society, lives in different words or
phrases, such as special effects, costume design, computer graphics, and so
forth. Unlike the definitions of tragedy, a spectacle in modern times, is the
same as a spectacle in the Greek play writes. To give the word spectacle a
little more meaning, you may say, “He really made a spectacle of himself
tonight” as you refer to a high school classmate who arrived at the reunion
wearing clothes from his years in high school. Clothes that were too small, and
tight, while walking around “hitting” on all the women, and boasting about how
good he still looked. In other words something that is out of the ordinary, but
catches the eye and is memorable. Spectacles were important in plays, because
they used to take place in large, concrete coliseums that had no computers to
create special effects; there was no colored lighting and rarely ever were props
used. During plays a character, normally a chorus, or narrator, or someone
providing comic relief for the audience would make a spectacle of themselves. By
doing this the audience would be able to catch their breath from the action
field tragic play. Another way the term spectacle was used during the Greek
plays, was to have a character dressed elaborately, to make a point of the
importance of their character during the play. During most tragic plays you kind
decipher the spectacle by the character being half human and half animal, or
having some sort of “gross” feature, according to the course webpage. This leads
us into the sublime of literature.
The sublime, as briefly defined on the course webpage, is beauty mixed or
edged with danger, terror, or threat which all occur on a grand or elevated
scale. When the audience experiences the sublime they usually feel a powerful
mixture of pleasure and pain that involves either attraction of repulsion. Most
people in modern times would say the sublime is a breath taking, larger than
life scene. A way to demonstrate sublime, is in the Disney movie
The Beauty and The Beast, where
although it is unfathomable, it is also captivating to watch as the small,
delicate princess falls madly in love with the large, infuriated beast. A
possible example of the sublime, is during
Agamemnon, when Clytemnestra brings Agamemnon into their bedroom and is
bringing lust to welcome him home, however in one blink she is then brutally
murdering him. The audience experiences the sublime of pleasure, by watching the
sexuality of the scene unfolding, but at the same time they are feeling pity as
they watch her begin to murder him. By understanding the sublime, along with the
spectacle, one can begin to understand tragedy in the classical literature form
on a deeper level.
Teaching Tragedy
I am a student who is pursing my degree in Education; therefore,
researching the significance of teaching Tragedy to students along with the best
ways to teach Tragedy and brainstorming fun and engaging activities, I believe
will be the most beneficial research for myself, a future teacher.
This research paper would allow me to not only gather and combine
knowledge, but also implement it into real-life applications.
My thoughts for organizing this paper consist of, first, introducing
Tragedy- what it is, what age group it is appropriate for, and why we read it.
There is a lot of this information provided on Mr. White’s Website under
Tragedy that I plan to use.
Secondly, I want to spend time studying the benefits teaching Tragedy offers to
students- the way it helps them form their identity, develops their character,
and deal with tragedies in their lives.
Some of this information is also provided on Mr. White’s Website.
Thirdly, I would like to research ways to best teach Tragedy, both from
online sources as well as take tools and ideas from Mr. White’s classroom.
Lastly, I want to add ideas and activities I found and would want to
implement as a future teacher, that I believe would be engaging and educational.
This last paragraph is where I would incorporate activities with topics
we have learned in class such as Oresteia trilogy, Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy,
The Bacchae and more.
My hopes for this paper are to inspire other future teachers by giving
brief definitions of Tragedy, showing the importance of the genre, and showing
ways a new teacher could implement these topics in their future classroom.
In addition, it is for my own knowledge, because I believe it is always
good to know different ways to teach certain subjects.
I am going to be a generalist teacher so there is a chance I could be
teaching literature; therefore, having this paper is something I can always
reference back too. I have already
begun the process and am excited about the ideas I have already found from
numerous sources.
Michael McDonald
February 22, 2015
Tragedy’s Fatal Flaw
The idea of the “fatal flaw” in tragedy I have found is often taught at
the high school level, due mainly because that seems to be what kids focus on.
When reading about Achilles many envision him, rightfully so I may add, as a
great and seemingly invincible warrior, but he meets his death it comes from his
lone weakness his heel. Though there is no real lesson to be learned from
Achilles, except for maybe wear armor on your feet, I believe the main reason
behind the continued teaching of the “fatal flaw” is that it allows for a lesson
in humility.
More often than not a tragic hero’s
flaw is not a physical one, but one of hubris. Hubris simply means that one
shows excessive pride or self-confidence, more often than not leading to a
downfall and humility, but in tragedies case the results is far more severe. The
reason behind the teaching of hubris I believe is to show that over confidence
is not always a good thing. The reason that it is often taught more so at the
high school level is due mainly because who knows more than a high school
student?
What better way to teach humility than
to present an audience with a great hero, who appears to be borderline super
human and ultimately have his downfall be the fact that, he himself believes he
is super human? The teaching of the “fatal flaw” distracts from the actual
teaching of tragedy due to the fact that it aims to teach a lesson rather than
delve into the inner workings of what makes a tragedy, and what inspires its
creation. The lesson of the “fatal flaw” teaches tragedy at its surface,
focusing on one square than the entirety of the creation. In reality, the “fatal
flaw” teaching takes away from tragedy rather than adding to it.
Anahi Montemayor
Teaching
Tragedy in a High School Classroom
Teaching tragedy is a challenge. As a
student at UHCL, I can honestly say I struggle with Tragedy, and everything it
has to offer. It is when I am given great examples that I start to develop
greater interest, and give it a chance. Like Dr. White mentions, “Tragedy
narrates serious, essential conflicts that define human identity, the
consequences of such conflicts, and potential resolutions”. Knowing this, I
believe that it helps to always read a classic tragedy and try to find something
a bit more modern to compare it to, so that I can visually understand it better.
Even when this sounds difficult and confusing, we encounter situations like this
all the time.
A great example of a tragedy can be
Agamemnon. This play is about a man who has been fighting a long battle, Trojan
War. Eager to come home, his life is short lived as Clytaemnestra, Agamemnon’s
wife, and Aegisthus, her lover, kill him and his slave Cassandra, in order to
take over the government. Because this is a complicated play, I would start off
by giving my students a family tree that we can all fill out while we're reading
as well as during discussion, to allow the students to understand the characters
and why they do the things they do. This family tree can also help the students
locate the characters while they are reading it, helping them family and names,
because that can get confusing quickly. Another thing I could do while reading
Agamemnon could be to have name drawings, which can allow different students to
read the play, giving everybody the chance to participate during this activity.
(Doing the name drawing will keep the students alert and reading, knowing that
they can be chosen at any time to take over a part.) Setting up my classroom
activities this way will allow my students to get everything they can out of the
play, while also participating, in order to try to get the entire picture of the
play. Because this play can be difficult to understand, or to even like we will
have to incorporate other activities that will help my students completely
understand the play, Agamemnon.
The best way to get my classroom
involves an understanding of Agamemnon it to try to get them into discussion of
what types of movies Agamemnon reminds them of. Once we get the scored figured
out, we will line up the movies from the most liked to the least, picking the
first three. We can make a list on the board and pick the top three that the
students are familiar with. This will help the students relate to Agamemnon with
something they know. We can then figure out the similarities as well as the
differences between the play and the movies, giving everyone the opportunity to
talk. After that, I could give them a rubric of our next assignment, which is to
write a paper comparing and contrasting the play to the movie they picked.
Creating a spider web, or a certain pre writing tool, will help the students
organize their ideas, which will give them the best results for the essay they
will write.
Nona Olivarez
Family Problems: We All Have Them
Incest.
The word alone creates a look of disgust among everyone’s face because the
thought of sexual relations with another family member is more than disturbing.
The mere idea of incest is extremely taboo and for good reason. Thinking of a
blood family member in any sexual way remains bizarre to the world because
family is supposed to be just that, family, not potential lovers. Despite the
word’s ability to create an uncomfortable feeling that smothers the room, incest
or at least the question of potential incestuous relations stands prevalent in
tragic story lines and is hard to ignore. In
the essay, “Families in Tragedy and the Oedipal/ Electra Complex”, Umaymah
Shahid states “Throughout Greek Tragedy as well as modern Tragedy families are
seen to be intimate on two extremes: hate and love; where both hatred and love
lead to their demise”. Families of Tragedy appear to be engaged in constant war
against one another whether hate prevails between wife and husband, mother and
son, or mother and daughter there is a continuation of betrayal, death, and
revenge. But where there lives extreme hate there also lives extreme love, and
this is where the lines blur from a normal, healthy relationship to a somewhat
obsessive relationship that raises questions of an underlying romantic love for
a mother or a father, thus introducing the Oedipal/Electra Complex.
So what
purpose does the Oedipal/Electra Complex have in Tragedies? Perhaps it is
because families are something that everyone has and in reality no one has a
perfect family. Aristotle’s Poetics
proclaims, “[T]he best tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses [i.e.,
families]”. Displaying struggle among family members makes the members of the
family seem substantially more real and in the same sense more relatable. The
Electra Complex defined means when the daughter and mother are in complete
opposition of one another and in competition for the father/husband’s love (Dr.
White’s course website). The play,
Mourning Becomes Electra, displays the rivalry between mother in daughter in
the form of the characters Christine and Lavinia. From the very beginning
Christine and Lavinia’s relationship appears to be severely strained as they
come into constant odds with each other. Although Lavinia looks in appearance
like her mother she does everything she can to conceal any similarities by
wearing plain clothes and pulling her hair back tightly. The source of hatred is
revealed when it becomes evident that Lavinia never felt loved by her mother,
and as a result turned to her father for her main source of parental love as
child and through her teenage to young adult years. It also becomes evident that
Lavinia feels a strong love towards her father because she constantly stands up
for him and acts as his protector. Both of these elements together in the story
demonstrate the Electra Complex, which lends to the dramatization of families.
On the
flip side, the Oedipal Complex defined means when the son covets his mother, and
has an antagonistic relationship with his father. This Freudian psychology is
also apparent in Mourning Becomes Electra
but this time through the character Orin, who is described to have talked
out loud to his absent mother repeatedly when recovering from a head wound. The
father, Ezra Mannon, is less than amused by his son’s neediness for his mother
and declares to have made a man out of Orin during the war. The fact that Orin
has a stronger relationship with his mother stands clear through the passage as
Christine displays motherly love for Orin that she has yet to show for Lavinia.
O’Neill initiates many complex family issues by introducing both the Oedipal and
the Electra Complex in the play and does this intentionally to portray family
disputes in the most dramatic and extreme way possible.
“Tragedy
expresses a combination of humanity's creative or formal impulses with its
destructive or wild impulses” is a concept taken from Nietzsche’s,
The Birth of Tragedy (Dr. White’s
course website). The formal impulses are Apolline while the wild impulses are
Dionysiac. The Dionysiac impulses can be seen in the form of the Oedipal/Electra
Complex because the feelings being exchanged are intense and somewhat wildly
extreme. For instance in Agamemnon,
Electra loves her father so intensely she convinces her brother to murder their
mother in an act of revenge, which easily can be said to be a “wild impulse”
based alone on pure emotion.
Ultimately for the continuation of my final essay I hope to further research the
Oedipal/Electra Complex and apply it to other plays and works of literature both
ancient and perhaps a little more modern. Also, I plan to more extensively
answer the question of the purpose of the Oedipal/Electra Complex in tragic
literature and why, even though it’s not as relevant, is still questioned and
noted today.
Victoria Webb
Tragedy is not Tragedy without a Spectacle
As a lover of all things overdramatic, I find myself drawn to the drama
of tragedy and the use of spectacle in plays. I will be answering the question,
“what is the importance of spectacle and sublime in a tragic play” and “how does
spectacle, or repression of spectacle, aid in the storytelling aspect of
tragedy”. I believe that the answer to this is not quite as simple as one may
think. There are examples in all the plays we have discussed in class that
support the idea that a tragic play depends on the spectacle.
We began our class with the play
Oresteia Agamemnon, and when witnessing the play, it was evident that
watching the play aids the audience more so than simply reading the text. The
audience is able to see the differentiating colors of Clytemnestra from the
chorus, as well as the dramatic speeches the actors have. This type of spectacle
gives the audience a deeper connection with the actors and the play. The
spectacle aid the audience to gain a better understanding of any type of
satirical relief, dramatics, and climatic moments during the play.
In addition to spectacle, I will also explain how the sublime plays a
role in tragedy. I will argue that both spectacle and sublime go hand in hand
when witnessing the play coming to life. The sublime, as defined in
“Terms/Themes” is something that is “larger than life” and is “is beauty mixed
or edged with danger, terror, threat--all on a grand or elevated scale”, it is
the audience experiencing the mix of “pleasure and pain”, “attraction and
repulsion” as well as “pity and fear” (White, Sublime, 2015). I believe that
sublime and spectacle are mixed together nicely in tragedy and positively aid
the plays in forcing the audience to feel what the characters feel, or empathize
with the situation that is happening before us.
In addition to discussing Oresteia
Agamemnon, I would like to bring in movies, as a modern form of the
traditional plays. I will explain how modern movies have managed to become such
a popular form of entertainment by using these ancient techniques. For example,
a couple recent movies that I recall having extravagant uses of spectacle and
sublime would be the 2012 movie Prometheus
and the 2011 movie Melancholia. Both
movies, while having very different plots, directing, and could be categorized
in different genres, both share the use of larger than life cinematography which
could be defined as both spectacle and sublime. A brief example of this I will
give is the use of the planet crashing and hitting earth in the movie
Melancholia; this type of spectacle
also shakes up the audience because of the fact that there may be an
otherworldly object on a set course for Earth. In the movie
Prometheus, there are physically larger aliens who are also human
creators that are on a mission to destroy all of the human race. The sublime
aspect I see in this movie, is the mission to find these otherworldly creators;
a characterization that I see as something godlike, which could also be
considered sublime. The spectacle, I believe, is the use amazing cinematography
to capture this large alien planet. With the use of ancient and modern forms of
entertainment I will argue my stance on the importance of spectacle and sublime
within tragedy.
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