LITR 4370 TRAGEDY Midterm1 Samples 2017 (midterm1 assignment) Model Answers to Part 3. Research Report 1 (proposal)  on Special Topic

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 (alphabetical order; scroll down for essays):

Kimberly Bronson, "Tragedy in Film"

Katie Morin, "Then and Now: The Evolution of Tragedy"

Clark Omo, "The Tragic Approach: Teaching the 'Why'"

Calyssa Rosene, "Teenagers and Tragedy"

Faron Samford, "The Tragic Flaw in Teaching Tragedy"

Kimberly Bronson

Tragedy in Film

As someone who thoroughly enjoys movies that create strong emotional responses, I took an interest in exploring popular films as tragedies. There are two specific movies that I feel make strong cases as being tragic. Southpaw, directed by Antoine Fuqua and Fury by David Ayer are two modern, well-made movies that fit nicely under the genre of tragedy.

Southpaw is a fictional story about a boxer named Billy who is peaking in his career. His long-time wife tries to get him to take it easy, but Billy is not ready to let go. Billy finds himself in a verbal altercation with a boxer that is trying to egg him on. In this moment, Billy makes a choice that sparks the tragedy that follows. Instead of peacefully walking away from the altercation with his wife, he lets his anger get the best of him and as a result, a gun goes off. Shockingly, his wife was where the bullet landed, and she tragically and dramatically dies a moment later. The sudden loss of his wife and best friend causes Billy to go on a downward, self-destructing spiral which causes him to loose literally everything to his name, including his daughter. As explained in Aristotle’s Poetics, which is posted on the course site, character shows “what kind of things a man chooses or avoids.” Had Billy chosen to avoid this conflict, he would not have lost his wife so suddenly. However, he felt he had to defend his character, so he engaged the boxer. In Billy’s mind, both options were bad ones, much like Agamemnon’s choice to sacrifice his daughter. Southpaw also fits nicely into a romantic narrative, since Billy goes on a personal quest to win back his daughter and eventually succeeds.

Katie Morin

2/22/2017

Then and Now: The Evolution of Tragedy 

          With time comes change, and literature is no exception to this rule. While certain characteristics of tragedy have remained true to the original genre throughout the years, others have evolved or been abandoned altogether in order to give us the more contemporary brand of tragedy we have grown accustomed to see today. While these modern-day works still have their merit, in comparison to original works of tragedy, their deviation from “the classics” becomes more apparent and their modifications have the potential to either detract from or enhance a work of tragedy’s intended meaning or purpose.

          I opted to write about this topic because of how much I enjoyed reading Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra, a retelling of the Oresteia by Aeschylus. While I can appreciate Agamemnon, the first segment of the Oresteia, I found myself much more engrossed in The Homecoming, the first installment of Mourning Becomes Electra. While both stories follow a similar storyline, their differences (some subtle and some less so), are indicative of just how much tragedy has evolved over the years. 

          On page 14 of his Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche writes:

“To the two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we owe our recognition that in the Greek world there is a tremendous opposition, as regards both origins and aims, between the Apolline art of the sculptor and the non-visual, Dionysiac art of music.”

The Dionysian style of art, with its focus on the chorus, unity, chaos, and music/dance, is opposed by the Apolline, with its individualism, order, and visual arts. This division between Dionysian and Apolline styles has become especially distinct when comparing the evolution of tragedy over time. The chorus, a Dionysian concept, gradually faded over time, being replaced with individual actors—individuation instead of unity. This change is seen in Mourning Becomes Electra, whose “chorus” is made up of a trio of townspeople, each having their own name, identity, thoughts, ideas, etc. However, in Agamemnon, members of the chorus are unnamed, and whenever one speaks, they are speaking for the entirety of the group. This change is also noted on our course’s website, which states: “Choral functions of background information and commentary may be reassigned from ‘community of elders’ to marginal groups or individuals.” This is especially evident in Mourning Becomes Electra, where the townspeople are described as being similar to a chorus, but really are distinct individuals as opposed to being a “true” chorus.

          Additionally, as discussed in class, a potential danger to the modernization of tragedy is “losing the myth.” In Agamemnon, Clytaemnestra’s motivation to kill her husband, Agamemnon, derives from her resentment towards him for sacrificing their daughter, Iphigenia, to the goddess, Artemis. The magnitude of his crime against kin is so great that audience members may feel sympathy for Clytaemnestra, and perhaps consider her killing of her husband to be just. Alternatively, in Mourning Becomes Electra, Ezra Manning’s wrongdoings are never explicitly stated, so his murder might not seem justified to some. One of the benefits of modern-day tragedies is that they might be easier to relate to given their more recent or realistic settings/contexts. However, in instances like this, the magnitude of Ezra Manning’s wrongdoing, whatever it may be, pales in comparison to that of Agamemnon’s, which can be attributed to the loss of the “myth” as seen in classic tragedies.

Clark Omo

23 February 2017

The Tragic Approach: Teaching the “Why?”

Teaching tragedy exists as a challenge as much as it does a necessity. When teaching tragedy, often teachers are faced with trying to communicate to students the imperatives of deciphering works that include grim, macabre, and strange topics. For instance, in Oedipus Rex, readers are faced with trying to sympathize with a character who murders his own father, marries his own mother, and then begets children by her. Not only must readers face such strange and taboo-infused topics, they are often faced with asking common sense question that naturally unravel the drama’s entire plot. For example, “Why don’t the Capulets and Montagues just accept one another?”, “Why can’t Hamlet simply prove Claudius’s guilt legitimately?”, and “Why doesn’t Othello ask Desdemona’s side before smothering her?”. Yet, the fact that a student would be asking “why” in of itself is answering the question. “Why” acknowledges that often the motivations that drive a character’s actions are not understood, like so much of human nature. Tragedy reflects this inviolable fact through its narratives of lust for revenge, cruel twists of fate, and undying grudges. Such is why I wish to research and explain how tragedy compels one to answer “why” and how, through examination and explanation of this theme, tragedy can be taught.

Of course, there is a sort of morbid fascination involved with the darkness of storytelling. Humanity has a long history of writing stories that deal with flawed heroes. Odysseus of The Odyssey, aforementioned Oedipus Rex, Agamemnon¸ and others prove this fascination’s roots begin as far back as the Classical periods. And this one facet of the Tragedy genre that is critical in understanding how it should be taught. I plan to explore the fascination and purpose of telling and teachings stories that reflect the darker and often more impactful sides of human nature in a classroom. A possible trail to follow when exploring this topic is posing the question: “What can we learn?”. As Miller puts in her article, “Tyranny of the happy ending.”, “Some aspects of the human experience can only be addressed in a tragic mode…” (n.pg.). With this in mind, there are some lessons that depend upon a tragic storyline, flawed characters, and unsatisfying endings to be taught. As Aristotle himself put it, “Tragedy…is an imitation of an actions that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude…in the form of action, not of narrative, through pity and fear” (n.pg.). Pity and fear are rife in tragedy, and these emotions contain a much more powerful message than happiness and elation. Such feelings can only be contained in the darkness. And by peering into the darkness, tragedy explores the nature of humanity in a gripping fashion, which is a vital purpose of teaching tragedy.

And, through this aspect of flawed characters, another point of teaching tragedy reveals itself; fascination with the flawed character that can be taught as opposed to the plot. Plot is a rather a solid thing. It is the factual spine of the story. “What happened, happened.” essentially is its structure. But the flaws of the characters, be it pride, anger, obstinacy, or obsession, are what anchor a reader into the story, because, often, the flaws are what present the conflict. It is because of the Capulets’ and Montagues’ refusal to bury the hatchet that their children, the star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet, are thrust into a world of intrigue, death, and betrayal. By his own hand, Oedipus seals the words of the oracle by slaying his own father and marrying Jocasta, simply because of his quickness to anger. The flaw is a key that must be used when teaching tragedy, for, in many ways, it is the stitching that sows together the plot.

Tragedy itself is a genre with immense potential. It possesses the ability to dive deep into the dark parts of human nature, and thus spar with critical views, lessons, and ideas. And the flaws of its characters serve as tethers for the readers and audience that bind them to the plot, the world, and ultimately the lessons that the story has to teach. Such are the ways that tragedy should be presented to students; they reflect the serious parts of our existence and explore them in deeper and ultimately more rewarding ways. True, they may be uncomfortable topics in some cases, and often hopes and dreams will be crushed, but the payoff is much greater. Besides, there is something to be enjoyed in watching a character reach the end of his or her tale, be it good, bad, or simply up in the air.

 Calyssa Rosene

Teenagers and Tragedy

          Literature has always been a huge passion of mine. While other little girls dreamt of being Disney princesses, I dreamt of having the library collection from Beauty and the Beast that Belle had access to. As a future high school English teacher, one of the main challenges I will be facing is getting my students excited about reading literature they normally wouldn’t choose.

 I used to be very close-minded when I was in high school. While I loved to read, there were some genres I couldn’t stand and tragedy was actually one of them. Coming into this class with that mindset really opened my eyes to how wrong I was about the genre. I’ve only dove into very little of it so far during the first part of the course, but it’s extremely interesting and there is so much to learn.

          I think the main problem with getting the attention of teenagers is that most required reading in high school isn’t very modernized. As educators we have to find ways to make the content relatable to the students. During my freshman year of high school, one of the issues my English teacher had was trying to get us excited about Romeo and Juliet. We all knew how it ended, and we could see the reading assignment coming from a mile away, but in order to make it more modernized for us he showed us the Baz Luhrman production of the play that was set in modern times and we were able to relate to it. In the end we were reading the play aloud to each other and acting scenes out, and we were actually excited about the assignments that followed.

          My goal for the research project is to pay close attention to Dr. White’s teaching strategies and the materials that are provided throughout the course in order to grasp a better understanding of how I can get my students excited about tragedy. I still have so much to learn myself but once I can grasp the material I believe I will highly enjoy teaching tragedy as an aspect of literature as well as prepare my students for a journey through the genre itself.

Faron Samford

The Tragic Flaw in Teaching Tragedy

          One of the great difficulties students and teachers often have with tragedy is the tendency to concentrate and focus on the tragic flaw, while leaving much of the other conventions of the genre mostly unexplained. The concept of the tragic flaw, “whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty,” is first explained thus in Aristotle’s Poetics (13b).

          Having experienced tragedies taught through various high school and university courses, Dr. White’s Tragedy class is one of the few that actually explore more of the characteristics of the genre. Before entering the class, I would’ve summed up tragedy as a genre by saying that a great hero or nobleman is brought down by his tragic flaw, or weakness, leading to his death, ruin, or the ruin of his family. The examples I remember primarily from multiple classes being Hamlet’s tragic flaw of indecisiveness leading to the death of everyone in the royal family of Denmark (Shakespeare, Hamlet). Similarly, the downfall of the family of Oedipus is caused by his determination to find out the killer of his father was and lift the curse on Thebes, despite warnings from Tiresias the soothsayer (Sophocles, Oedipus Rex).

          The teaching of the tragic flaw is often done as almost a key to the texts that unlocks the meaning.  In the depth that it is explored in high schools and lower level university classes, this enables to the instructor to pass along one of the main ideas of these texts in a way that can be understood by students in a short amount of time. Part of this is due to the fast-paced nature of high school lesson schedules and, as Michael McDonald states “at the high school level, most students don’t have the knowledge to reach into history or various other literatures to understand what tragedy is attempting to present to its audience” (Model Answers 2015). I feel this is a key motivation for the teaching of the nature of tragedy in high school classes because understanding Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, as explained by Michaela Fox, “require(s) a level of thought way outside of traditional thinking processes” (Model Answers 2015). Most high school students are not ready to delve into the duality of Apolline / Dionysiac interplay that invests tragedy with a deeper meaning. Focusing on the tragic flaw allows teachers to expose the students to tragedies and helps them to have some small understanding of them, which can help them in the future when they begin to encounter them at higher levels.