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LITR 4370
TRAGEDY
Midterm2 Samples 2015 (midterm2 assignment)
Model Answers to Part 2. |
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Part 2. Learning about
Tragedy 2: Revise, continue, improve, & Extend Essay
begun in Midterm1
on learning experience with tragedy,
extending to include Sophocles's Family of Oedipus plays.
(Revise / improve midterm1 draft & add at least 5-7
paragraphs for 9-10 paragraph total.)
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 eight 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 play by O’Neil,
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.
As I learned more about tragedy as a genre I
also learned more about mimesis, which 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 mimesis 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. Still, mimesis is not only art (literature) imitating other art
(literature), but is more importantly art (literature) imitating “reality,
nature, or life” (Dr. White’s Website). For instance in Shakespeare’s play,
Hamlet, the character Hamlet states, “for anything so overdone is from the
purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as
’twere, the mirror up to nature” (Act 3, Scene 2). Basically what Hamlet means
by this statement is that actors need to act as natural as possible and avoid
exaggeration or overacting because the true purpose of theatre (art) is to serve
as a representation of reality. As a result of portraying nature through art,
readers/viewers will take the work of art more seriously and be able to relate
more easily because of realness the work of art possesses. Nevertheless a work
of art cannot fully represent the entirety of the real world, instead it
represents selections of reality that have significant and/or symbolic meaning
(Dr. White’s website). In other words, works of art rarely give you detailed
description of a person doing everyday things like brushing one’s hair unless it
has a deeper underlying meaning. All in all, mimesis is not the easiest concept
to fully grasp at first as it is more complex than just imitation alone, which I
didn’t realize until Dr. White brought it to my attention, and perhaps I have
more to learn as far as the full meaning of the term itself, but since the first
part of the Midterm my understanding of mimesis has definitely grown
exponentially.
The concept of mimesis brings me to
another thing I have learned so far in this course which pertains to imitation
being 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. Before taking this course I never considered Tragedy as a
means of learning, but after reading plays like,
Agamemnon and
Oedipus at Colonus, I see now the
connection between learning and tragedy. Moreover, 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. For example in the play
Oedipus the King, the character
Oedipus is both good and bad. Oedipus strives to be a good King and does what he
can for the people like attempting to discover the murderer (unknowingly
himself) of the previous King to save the city, but despite his best intentions
Oedipus over and over again makes bad decisions like not sparing the life of the
traveler on the road (unknowingly his father) and not listening to the prophet
Tiresias’ wise words. In other words Oedipus is the heroic type who is strong,
smart, and loyal yet he is also quick to anger, arrogant, and rash. In Tragedy
the clear cut good guy and bad guy are not typically portrayed, instead Tragedy
introduces characters like Oedipus that exist as a little bit of both, which is
truer to human nature and allows the characters to feel more human and realistic
to the reader/viewer as we are all both, good and bad. Like in real life these
good/bad characters are able to learn from their mistakes and often become
better people because of the tragic things that has happened to them. In the
sequel Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus is
an old man on the verge of death yet from the very start he states, “For I am
taught by suffering to endure” (6). To state it simply, Oedipus means that
through his suffering he has learned endurance which reinforces the learning
theme at the very start and sets the tone for the rest of the play, which is
that Oedipus’ character has developed into a wiser man than he once was because
of the tragic occurrences in his life. Therefore as Aeschylus so eloquently
stated in Agamemnon, “wisdom comes
through suffering”.
Lastly, I’ve learned that the tragic
hero doesn’t necessarily have to be male. For some reason I always assumed the
hero of the story, at least as far as Greek tragedies go, are male but the play
Antigone suggests the opposite.
While it may be debatable whether Antigone or Creon is the tragic hero,
Karissa Guerrero provided a good argument for Antigone being the protagonist of
the play. Certainly, Antigone possesses qualities that pertain to the tragic
hero type including the fact that she doesn’t fit into the mold society has
created for her. Also, like many tragic heroes she faces impossible odds in her
attempt to defy the rule of King Creon, and she is more than willing to die for
what she is fighting for. Furthermore, her belief in a higher law, that of the
Gods, and overall her pride leads to her downfall and the fact that she
expresses a “fundamentalist prioritization of the family over the state” can be
seen as a tragic flaw (Dr. White’s Website). In short Antigone displays that
women can be the tragic hero just as much as men can, which is something I had
not thought of before since tragic heroes tend to be male and accordingly causes
me to appreciate the play Antigone
that much more.
In short, as I mentioned before
Tragedy is a means of learning in multiple ways because not only do the
characters learn more about themselves but arguably the reader/viewer has the
possibility to learn more about human nature and thus themselves as well, so
because of the bad things that happen one is able to learn from their mistakes
and for this purpose tragedy is a necessary part of life.
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