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LITR 4370
TRAGEDY Model Assignments Midterm2 Samples 2017 (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
. . . to include Sophocles's Family of Oedipus plays.
(Index)
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 wanted 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.” 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.
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’ 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 narrative of comedy page on the course site discusses mistaken
identity, a term which would be applied towards Pentheus’ decision to
cross-dress. It 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.” The narrative genre of comedy has also been
found in Lysistrata, as the base of the plot is the women of Sparta swearing an
oath to withhold sexual relations from their husbands until a peace treaty is
signed to end the Peloponnesian war their husbands want to be involved in. I
feel as though their husbands could be trying to live up to a false identity of
abstinent individuals, and that’s where a large part of the comedy lies.
Rolling back towards tragedy, I had a very brief encounter with Agamemnon
in my early high school years, but I had no idea it was part of a trilogy in
which the tragic story continued. Reading the trilogy in its entirety was
definitely a journey because it followed the story all the way into the
afterlife. 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.
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 in 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. 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 can tie into 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 his family romance aspect would jump into
play. However, the tragedy’s most famous outcome is the Oedipal complex. The
Oedipal complex is defined on the course website as “a child (archetypally male)
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.
In the Theban trilogy, I have felt a sense of tragedy, romance and
comedy. Tragedy in the form of Oedipus’ life story itself, romance in which that
he has for his mother regardless of the amount of disgust that showcases, and
comedy in which the relationship between him and his mother is so horrifying
there’s nothing to do but laugh at the idea. Tragedy keeps surprising me with
the amount of genres that can be included within it. I’m sure there’s a way that
someone could write a tragedy and include small amounts of every other genre
within it while still keeping it organized. While there’s only five weeks left
of this semester, I have a strong feeling these weeks will be crammed with
knowledge of the remaining works we are going over, and I am anxious to learn
deeper knowledge of such.
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