LITR 4370 TRAGEDY Final Exam Samples 2017 (final exam assignment) Model Answers to Part 2. Complete Learning about Tragedy Essay

Part 2. Complete "Learning about Tragedy" Essay

Calyssa Rosene

Would You Look at That, Tragedy Can Be Relatable

          Upon entering this class I had no idea what to expect. The only experience I have had in terms of reading or experiencing tragedy is the little bit of Shakespeare that we all have to encounter in high school, or so I thought. As it turns out, aspects of tragedy can be hiding in all kinds of literature. Tragedy isn’t necessarily a play or a film doused in death and murder and bloodshed. It can be anything that is unanticipated or unwanted in terms of an event or happening. According to Aristotle’s Poetics, “Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude.” One thing I always got wrong about tragedy was that it can’t have aspects of comedy when in reality the two can certainly be intertwined. In fact, tragedy can consist of many genres and emotions.

Tragedy can make you laugh, cry, and even fuel a rage fire inside of you all at the same time. I’ve also begun understanding the use of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy it states “the chorus of the original tragedy is an "ideal" ground, a ground lifted high above the real paths of mortal men. For this chorus the Greeks built the floating scaffold of an invented natural state, and placed upon it natural beings invented especially for it.” A good example is from Antigone, in which the chorus represents the people of Thebes who try to talk sense into King Creon, but in the end have to tell him “I told you so” when things go downhill. The use of the chorus is a staple piece in tragedy, and they raise the bar for dramatic developments. It’s almost as though you’re watching a Spanish soap opera unfold in front of you with over-dramatized interactions from the chorus itself.

          What do I mean when I say tragedy is over-dramatic like a telenovela? A good example I recently found was within my presentation part of The Bacchae. In my part a messenger has just explained to Dionysus and Pentheus that he has witnessed what the Bacchic women are capable of (which is apparently ripping cows to shreds with their bare hands) after they escaped from the prison that Pentheus placed them in. An enraged Pentheus decides he wants to spy on these women but Dionysus explains that they would kill him if he were to go as a man, so he is convinced to spy on them dressed as a woman. Pentheus shows thanks to Dionysus, but the entire plan was devised to make Pentheus extremely embarrassed by the act. I revealed that the act of trickery on Dionysus’s part was a very Mean Girls style debacle in my presentation; however, it also showed me how tragedy and comedy can be linked as one. The over dramatization is important because tragedy has to matter in order to be relatable. We live in a very dramatic society, and sometimes things have to be over the top to grab the attention of an audience. Another example of comedic text that we’ve read that could be considered over the top would be Lysistrata.

          The narrative of comedy page on the course site discusses mistaken identity, a term that could easily be seen in Lysistrata. One main example of this from the text is when Myrrhine leads her husband Kinesias to believe that she will sleep with him after abstaining from sexual contact if he creates a peace treaty between Athens and Sparta. After Kinesias agrees and does as wished, Myrrhine runs off and leaves him wanting her. In terms of the husbands of the play, I feel as though they could also be showcasing a false identity because they are trying to remain abstinent and not give into the women who are giving them an ultimatum, and this is where a large amount of the comedy lies. Mistaken identity can also be applied towards Pentheus’s decision to cross-dress in The Bacchae. After all, the section on mistaken identity states that a comedic problem can arise in “one person being taken for another, disguises, cross-dressing, dressing up or down, men or women assuming each other's positions, interests, practices, or identities. Action consists of characters trying to resolve the problem or live up to the demands of the false identity, or of other characters trying to reconcile the “new identity” with the “old identity.” One could also argue that the women in Lysistrata are also under a mistaken identity because they are trying to take the place of men in the role of being dominant and making the decisions or running the game if you will.

          In Lysistrata the main problem for the men is the fact that their wives are withholding sex from them, while in The Bacchae, the decision for Pentheus to cross-dress could have some underlying psychological problems that often leads to Pentheus’s death by the hands of his own mother. This shows that while certain scenes can be comedic, it’s simple to transition back into tragedy based on the events leading up to a play’s climax point. In Agamemnon there were moments throughout the story that felt like a challenge from the horror movie franchise of Saw. For example, Agamemnon had to murder his own flesh and blood daughter in order to save the lives of his men on their journey to Troy. This created a war within me because while I couldn’t fathom the idea of killing my own child, I also couldn’t imagine losing a ship of many men to the winds of an angry Goddess I had to appease. The largest difference between The Oresteia trilogy that contains Agamemnon and the Saw franchise is that Saw relies more on a spectacle of horror and The Oresteia trilogy focuses on vengeance and coming to terms with tragic events. In Saw characters are murdered as part of a game for wrong doings in their lives, whereas the murders that take place in The Oresteia trilogy are out of spite and revenge for the most part.

          Tragedy really has a way of messing with your conscience and it really makes you think about “what would you do” scenarios. While the scenario itself is tragic, this could show that there are remnants of romance within the walls of The Oresteia trilogy. While Agamemnon had to go through a despairing trial by killing his daughter, he also showed heart and strength for his men that he didn’t want to lose. This isn’t saying he was completely in love with his crew, only that sometimes you must make sacrifices for those you love. On the romance term page on the course site, there is a description of action taking place in romance. It states “action often takes the form of a physical journey or adventure; characters may be captured or threatened and rescued. Episodes in the narrative may involve trials, tests, or ordeals in which desire or vision or protagonist is tested”. This is huge in The Oresteia trilogy of Agamemnon, the Libation Bearers, and Euminides as Agamemnon and Orestes have to face action in the form of kill or be killed. Agamemnon kills his daughter, is murdered by Orestes’ mother, and Orestes kills his mother because of that.  

          Continuing the romance to tragedy connection, in Mourning Becomes Electra, we see a highly dysfunctional family that has many twists and turns. Christine Mannon is the mother of Orin and Lavinia as well as the wife of Ezra Mannon, who hates her husband and essentially her daughter, plotting to murder her husband so she can live happily in the arms of another. As I said, it’s like a Spanish soap opera. However if you compare Christine wanting to poison Ezra to Agamemnon killing his daughter Iphigenia, the two are not anywhere near the same platform. One could almost call Agamemnon’s sacrifice brave, because he had to make the hard decision of choosing many lives over one who was of importance to him, while Christine poisoning Ezra was out of selfishness.

          Another prime example of romance and tragedy linked together is the entirety of the play Desire Under the Elms. Eben and his new step-mother Abbie start off in a rocky place due to Eben not wanting another mother figure around. He was very much connected with his mother at a young age despite his father Ephraim treating her with disrespect until her death. After duking it out with Abbie constantly, he starts having feelings for her in a very awkward arrangement and she feels the same. As they fall in love, the play showcases their romance in a threatened form per the definition of romance from the course page. The threat is in the form of Ephraim, because they both know if he found out about their affair he would go ballistic so they sneak around as best as they can manage until Abbie becomes pregnant with Eben’s child. While Ephraim believes the child is his, the truth eats away at Abbie and Eben both. The tragedy steps in when Abbie decides to murder their child so she and Eben’s relationship can go back to a simpler time as it was in the beginning without the baby. This seems like a selfish act on behalf of Abbie, like Christine poisoning Ezra, but like Christine she did this from a romantic point of view so her and Eben could have that honeymoon phase style of love again.

          There is a similar situation in Hippolytus in the form of the forced relationship between Hippolytus and his step-mother Phaedra. Hippolytus is a mortal prince, and he chooses to be infatuated with Artemis, the Goddess of virginity as he prefers the idea of chastity. As he excludes Aphrodite, the Goddess of love, she grows angry with him and causes Phaedra to fall in love with him out of spite. Unlike Eben and Abbie, Hippolytus does not feel the same feelings toward his step-mother as she does for him, and he rejects her. This leads her to hang herself after feeling shameful, after leaving a suicide note stating that her step-son Hippolytus has raped her. Their story is more focused on the tragedy aspect, but there is definitely the aspect of romance in terms of Hippolytus worshipping Artemis, and Phaedra developing feelings for Hippolytus.

          In the story of Phaedra, we go through the events between her and Hippolytus in her point of view and we understand her back story more fully. She understands that falling in love with her step-son is a sin, and she hopes that he will show the same feelings for her so she can feel better about her situation. Throughout the story we see Phaedra’s wet nurse attempting to help get her back on course of a normal life and suppress the feelings for her step-son, but as we learned from the ending of Hippolytus, the help is not successful as she ends up committing suicide by hanging herself. While the romance aspect is awkward in terms of the relationship trying to be created, there is still a way that the story is relatable. Some of us have fallen in love with someone we know we shouldn’t have fallen in love with. Not necessarily a family member, but even someone who won’t be good for us as a whole. There is a battle internally of trying to fight these feelings off so we don’t end up in a negative situation, and that’s exactly what Phaedra was trying to do. Even then, Phaedra wouldn’t have had to battle had it not been for Aphrodite forcing these feelings upon her to invoke revenge against Hippolytus.

One thing still remains, that tragedy doesn’t just include Shakespearean sword fights and duels to the death, it encompasses human emotion and life events as a whole. There is a term called “family romance” that could tie into Mourning Becomes Electra, simply because Lavinia loves her father and wants to take the place of her mother, and feels like she should be seen as higher on the family chain if you will, which causes the internal tragic conflicts of the storyline. Family romance is defined as “the idea is that in the life of every child is a repressed desire that the child's parents be superior to what they are and that the child, by extension, be a princess, a prince, or some other "more than mortal" sort.

          The family romance plot also strongly applies to the Theban trilogy, which tells the story about Oedipus and his family. The first story in the Theban trilogy is Oedipus the King. Oedipus was found by peasants and handed over to a king and queen to be raised, which is where part of his family romance aspect would jump into play. Further explaining of family romance in terms of Oedipus, had he not been raised by a king and queen he would have lived as common folk with no real power. He had wealthy and powerful parents to bring him up in a higher society. However, coming out of the family romance Oedipus also developed a famous literary notion, the Oedipal complex. The Oedipal complex is defined on the course website as “a child (archetypally male) who wishes sexually to possess the opposite-sex parent and to kill or remove the same-sex parent. Thus a male child yearns for his mother and opposes his father's attentions to the mother”. This is exactly what the basis of Oedipus’ character holds, as he wishes to kill his own father in order to be with his mother. Talk about a scandal among the tragic community! In Oedipus the King, Oedipus represents what one would look for in a leader as he strives to be strong for the Athenian community. However once we reach the end of the trilogy in Oedipus at Colonus, we see him as a beggar as he has been banished from his home for the murderous and incestual sins he has committed. He ends up paying for his mistakes heavily, and in turn created an awkward situation for readers everywhere to discover.

          Throughout all of these works, the reader is taken on a journey through tragic events with romantic and comedic aspects. This is how tragedy is made relatable and is modernized. On the tragedy modernizes page on the course website, it states that tragedy is modernized when other genres appear more predominantly. This is where we combine tragedy with genres like comedy, romance, and spectacle. We can link these works to our modern day society and understand some of the events these characters have gone through, or at least have some insight as to why they’ve been involved in them. Tragedy can continue to surprise the reader by throwing in pieces of other genres, such as romance or comedy, all while not losing sight of the tragic circumstances at hand. All of the works that we’ve looked over through the semester surprised me, because while I didn’t believe I could feel for any of these characters, I was shocked to see that I could relate to some of the emotions they felt. I may have never murdered a child as an act of love or fallen in love with a family member, but I have had to make hard decisions in life in order to keep things from growing chaotic. That’s where tragedy links to today’s world; we are able to see certain events from the point of view of these characters, and we are able to link up with their emotions and tie them to certain events we’ve experienced ourselves.