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(2016
final exam assignment) Sample Student Final Exam Essays 2016 Essay 1. Define "genre" + examples |
LITR 4370 Tragedy
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Jeff Bell
On the Subject of Genre
The world is filled with countless works of art, literature, film, music,
etc. Creativity is what separates
man from animals. We create art for
the sake of art, simply because that is what it means to be human.
However, to be human is also to be analytical.
Human beings created science as a means of understanding and classifying
the world. In the pursuit of
knowledge, we as humans classify everything around us, art included.
This is what “genre” is. By
definition, genre is the classification of art by associating it with similar
works of art, thereby categorizing it.
Genres help us understand and pre-judge art so we will have a notion
whether or not we will like what it is we are about to read, watch, etc.
In literature, “genre” can be broken down into three categories:
subject/audience identification, form, and narrative.
This essay will explore these categories of literary genres and explore
where those categories can be seen today in modern fantasy fiction.
For anybody who has ever been to a bookstore, the subject/audience
identification category of genre is the easiest to comprehend and digest.
A person would be hard-pressed to go to a book store and not find the
store divided into sections titled “Fantasy and Sci-Fi,” “Teen Paranormal
Romance,” and “Self-Help,” among others.
These labels give us a general idea what to expect when picking up a book
of that genre. If, for example, you
were to go to the “Non-Fiction” section, you could reasonably expect not to find
a book about a boy who lives in the UK who is a student at a secret school that
trains wizards. Instead, knowing
you are in the non-fiction section, it would probably come as no surprise to
find a biography of a United States President who was assassinated in Dallas,
TX. Furthermore, if you were to see
a trailer for an upcoming film called “Teen Murder House 6” that is being touted
as “this season’s next big horror,” you could make the assumption that it will
probably be scary (or attempt to be) and there likely will not be a happy ending
for all the characters.
A
very popular category is the fantasy fiction genre.
In the past decade fantasy has exploded in popularity, and has become one
of the most recognizable genres.
HBO’s Game of Thrones is a perfect
example of this. Millions of people
watch the show, and countless more are at least aware of it.
If asked to describe the show, it becomes apparent very quickly that this
is a fantasy story, as it is about dragons, magic, sword fighting, etc., which
can all be identified as fantasy.
Subject identification is probably the most common and easiest to understand
form of genre classification, which is why we cling to it in order to understand
any particular form of art before we consume it.
“Formal” genre, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to comprehend. The
“formal” category of genre is one where literature is categorized by the voice
or voices present in the story.
This can further be broken down into three subcategories: Single voice,
dialogue, and narrator + dialogue.
Single voice, or “narrator,” is where you have one speaker who addresses the
audience by themselves. There are
many manifestations of this form.
Many songs, poems, standup comedy routines, monologues, and speeches are of the
single voice form. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not
Taken,” and President Kennedy’s Inaugural Address all fit this form.
Dialogue, as one can surmise, is when two or more characters speak to
each other, and the audience overhears the conversation.
This is probably the most prevalent form in our society today.
In Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, Richard adventures all over
the world solving cataclysmic problems.
His main trait is that he is highly intelligent and studious, but knows
his limits. He is constantly
talking to other characters, scouring their knowledge for any way to solve these
problems. That is the dialogue
form. Rarely now are there books or
movies made that simply have one person on screen for an extended amount of time
directly addressing the audience.
It simply is not done very much anymore.
Dialogue, however, is not a modern invention.
“Oedipus the King” is a perfect example of how the dialogic form has
existed for centuries, if not millennia.
The final form, narrator + dialogue, is one that is fairly common in
fictional books, and somewhat in films and plays.
In Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,” the protagonist, Katniss, is the
sole means by which the story is told.
She thinks in the first person, speaking (more or less) to the reader.
However, she also converses with other characters throughout the story,
making it narrator + dialogue. Many
plays also follow this form. In
“Oedipus the King,” for example, it can be argued that the Chorus serves as a
narrator. They often speak
(somewhat indirectly) to the audience in order to give exposition, breaking the
fourth wall (since the other characters around them take no notice).
This form is more prevalent in plays than in film, but it is still widely
used.
The
final category of genre is the narrative style, which can be a bit tricky to
identify, but is very important to understanding genre. The narrative style of a
genre can be divided into four types:
tragedy, comedy, romance, and satire.
These do not necessarily refer to the subject identification, but often
coincide with it. Tragedies often
start with a problem that is central to the plot and the characters within.
The plot often centers around families, and details the problems the
exist within that family. Tragedies
almost always end with the main character(s) dying, resolving the problem
established in the beginning.
Tragedies are often introspective and focus on teaching the characters (and
audience) a lesson. In the case of
“Oedipus the King,” the titular character seeks to rid his kingdom of a plague
that is killing it from within.
Through his journey, he discovers that the man who killed the former king was
none other than himself, and that it was his estranged father.
He also learned that the queen he married was none other than his mother,
whom sired children with him. In
the end, Oedipus gouges his eyes out and is banished from the land.
While the plot of this play is not identical to other tragedies, it
shares all of the common traits: the tragic hero, the family problems, the fall
of the protagonist.
Comedy, however, is on the opposite side of the spectrum.
Comedies also have problems, but they are much smaller in scale, and
often there are not tragic consequences.
Comedies are extremely popular, and can be seen across a vast array of
media. The television show
How I Met Your Mother is a textbook
example. The overall plot is the story of Ted Mosby trying to find the women he
believes he is supposed to marry.
Episode to episode there are minor problems, like learning to cope with his best
friend getting married through a swordfight, or splintering his friends by
pointing out each of their annoying habits, but at the end of most episodes, all
of the characters are back together, drinking at their favorite pub.
There are never world-affecting, catastrophic plots in the show, but
instead just real-world minor problems.
Romance is possibly the most misleading of the narrative genres.
When most people think of “romance” stories, they immediately think of
love stories, like Romeo and Juliet
or 50 Shades of Grey.
However, that is not necessarily what a “romantic” story is.
Romance refers to a story whose main character goes on some sort of
journey or quest in order to achieve some kind of specific goal.
This could be saving the world, rescuing the princess, getting the
beautiful coworker to notice the main character and see that he is the man she
is truly meant to be with, etc.
Romance is by far the most common narrative genre in modern writing, because it
is easy for the audience to stay engaged with characters when there is some kind
of goal in sight.
The
final narrative genre is satire.
Most people equate satire with comedy, which is not necessarily wrong.
The fundamental difference between the two is that, while comedy has a
conflict that needs to be overcome, often with funny results, satire takes a
pre-existing idea or story and parodies it.
When Scary Movie came out,
people did not expect a movie that featured a gripping, romantic plot, or a
complex, thought-provoking tragedy.
It was marketed as a funny movie that spoofed many horror movie tropes.
People remember it for being absurdly funny, not for being a
critically-acclaimed cinematic masterpiece.
In modern fantasy fiction, all of the narrative genres can be found.
However, the most prominent is the romance genre.
In the Harry Potter series,
the overall plot is that Harry must defeat the evil wizard Voldemort and prevent
him from taking over the world.
Each book within the series has its own plot, but that is the overarching
romantic theme. Most fantasy books
feature some kind of romance. As
previously stated, it is easy to become engaged in a story if there is some kind
of goal driving the story. In
The Lord of the Rings, the hobbits
must destroy the One Ring in order to stop Sauron and save the world; in Brandon
Sanderson’s Steelheart, the main
character and his team have to figure out the titular villain’s weakness and
kill him before he destroys Chicago.
Romance is by and large probably the easiest-to-find narrative genre in modern
fantasy. However, other narrative
genres can be found within these romantic stories.
In George Martin’s A Game of
Thrones, King Robert Baratheon is a very tragic character.
As with many people in the series, he is murdered unexpectedly, with dire
consequences. However, after some
exposition, you find out that prior to the start of the book, when he first got
married to his wife, she was completely enamored with him. On their wedding
night, as they were about to consummate their marriage, in a drunken state he
kept saying the name of his former betrothed, who had died tragically some time
before. From that point on, she
grew to resent him, and due to this, his constant whoring and drinking, and the
fact that he was becoming increasingly corrupt and driving the Crown to ruin,
she eventually conspired to murder him.
In his own way, Robert Baratheon somewhat resembles both Agamemnon and
Oedipus. In Terry Pratchett’s
Discworld, there are many instances
of comedy and satire. A perfect
example is at the beginning of his first book, when explaining the creation of
the universe. Discworld is atop the
back of a giant turtle that is drifting through space.
It is theorized that when several of these turtle drifted toward each
other, they all collided in a massive space turtle orgy, which spawned the
universe. This theory is referred
to as the “Big Bang Hypothesis.”
The satire of modern scientific theory, as well as other comedic and satirical
themes, can be found in the rest of his 41-book series.
Genres help us understand what to expect when consume media, by telling us what
kind of story we are in for.
However, genres are not steadfast rules by which all media abide.
As Dr. White says, “genre is not a box, but a yardstick to measure it
by.” Modern fantasy perfectly
exemplifies this statement, by blurring the lines of genre to give us some of
the best stories written in the 21st century.
