Heather Minette Schutmaat

22 February 2016

The Universality of Tragedy

          John Buice’s midterm essay, “The Tragic Irony of Irony in Tragedy,” provides an interesting and enlightening discussion of the importance of irony, dramatic irony, and action, in both Greek Tragedy and African Literature. In his discussion, Buice emphasizes the importance of action in tragedy by stating, “any act is fundamentally more virtuous than inaction” and supports this claim by pointing out how “the great qualities of Oedipus, Agamemnon, and other Greek heroes were immaterial; their actions determined their status as tragic heroes.” Buice also connects the significance of action to African Literature, asserting that Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart also “chose to act as the only moral response to his tragic condition,” which further stresses the importance of action and provides an understanding of Aristotle’s insistence that tragedy must involve “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude.” Furthermore, pointing out this intersection also demonstrates how Greek Tragedy and African literature correspond and meet in terms of the tragedy of the human condition, and consequently establishes the universality of the genre.

          What struck me most about Buice’s essay, however, was his final note on the prominence of family in the literature of Tragedy. At the beginning of the course, we learned that tragedy involves family, or as Aristotle states, the best tragedy is “founded on the story of a few houses [i.e. families],” and we’ve identified this in each play that we’ve read. Buice’s essay offers an explanation for the prominence of family in tragedy that I found enlightening, thought-provoking, and ultimately agreed with: “I think the reason family and community, especially in Things Fall Apart, are so prominent in the literature of Tragedy is because the tragedies of life met alone are unbearable. The only comfort we can find after doing everything to overcome our human condition and failing is each other.” I think the reason I found his explanation of the prominence of family so striking, and reflected on it as long as I did, is because Buice essentially proves that tragedy is so universal that we even respond to tragedy in a universal manner—by turning to our families and finding comfort in one another.

          Isaac G. Villanueva’s midterm essay, “The Value of Learning by Experiencing Tragedy and Africa,” centers on the similarities and dialogue that exist between Master Harold and the Boys and Oedipus the King, as well as the differences between their modern and traditional cultures. Like Buice’s examination of the significance of action in Greek Tragedy and African Literature, Villanueva’s essay draws parallels between Master Harold and the Boys and Oedipus the King, and shows how both works involve characters who act: “I see the lead characters in Master Harold and the Boys and Oedipus the King, Sam and Oedipus, as being the good guys who try to do good and have it turn out badly anyway. It is ironic that things don’t live up to their expectations. These two stories are classic examples of what real life is like.” Villanueva also highlights the mixed nature of humanity in tragedy and suggests that for this reason, tragedy is the most realistic genre: “We all have good and bad in us, and when compared with works of romance and comedy, tragedy is the most like real life.”

Although I haven’t read Master Harold and the Boys, Villanueva’s commentary on the differences between modern and traditional cultures, or modern and classic tragedies, provided me with features to look for in our readings in the second half of the semester. For example, Villanueva asserts, “Most classic tragedies are mainly about royalty, as we shall see shortly in Oedipus the King, while modern tragedies seem to be about middle-class people…” I found this shift in socioeconomic status really interesting and look forward to identifying and examining this change in contemporary novels.

Overall, Buice and Villanueva both demonstrated the universality of tragedy by analyzing and comparing Greek Tragedy and African Literature, and the parallels they drew between the works, the characters, and their actions and fates, establish tragedy as the most universal and realistic genre of literature.

Mixed Characterization as a Defining Feature of Tragedy

          What stands out to me the most in studying Aeschylus’s trilogy alongside Wole Soyinka’s play is learning that the mixed nature of characters is one of the defining features of tragedy as a literary genre. The word tragedy in its broad and popular sense is generally used to describe an unfortunate event that causes great suffering, especially when the event is undeserved. In other words, in common speech, we assign the word tragedy to events in which bad things happen to good people, such as the sudden death of a young person or a good person going wrong. In literary criticism, however, the word tragedy takes on a different and more complex meaning. Unlike the broad sense of the word tragedy that depicts tragedy as an act of misfortune in the life of a good person, tragedy in the literary sense depicts the mixed nature of humanity and illuminates both the good and bad qualities of all individuals, and defines tragedy not as an accident, but as a consequence of our mixed nature and human decisions. Identifying and examining the mixed nature of the main characters in The Oresteia Trilogy by Aeschylus and Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka has helped me in defining tragedy as a literary genre, as well as establish the universality of tragedy and mixed human nature.

          Unlike the narrative genre of romance in which the good and bad characters, or heroes and villains, are clearly defined, tragedy portrays humanity in a more complex, and more realistic, manner—oftentimes through a character whose intentions are good, but whose actions inevitably have tragic consequences. For example, in Agamemnon, part one of The Oresteia Trilogy, King Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia in order to appease Artemis and gain favorable winds for his forces to sail to Troy. However, corresponding with Aristotle’s statement in Poetics that “Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited,” Agamemnon is not illustrated as an utter villain, but instead as a human of mixed nature in a tragic position:

“It's harsh not to obey this fate—but to go through with it is harsh as well, to kill my child, the glory of my house, to stain a father's hands before the altar with streams of virgin's blood. Which of my options is not evil? … How can I just leave this fleet,
and let my fellow warriors down?
Their passionate demand for sacrifice to calm the winds lies within their rights—
even the sacrifice of virgin blood.
So be it. All may be well." (242-253)

Although readers and viewers may initially deem Agamemnon a villain knowing that he sacrifices his own daughter, an examination of the tragic conflict of his situation shows that while sacrificing his daughter was bad, he did so for what he felt was a greater cause. In short, Agamemnon exemplifies the mixed nature of humanity because he is both villainous in sacrificing his daughter, and heroic in gaining favorable winds for his fleet, rather than one or the other, and demonstrates how individuals in tragedy are not defined as good or bad, but mixed.

          Agamemnon’s wife, Queen Clytaemnestra, his son Orestes, and his daughter Electra also exemplify the mixed nature of individuals in tragedy. In part one of The Oresteia Trilogy Agamemnon returns to Argos, where Queen Clytaemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murder Agamemnon and his slave Cassandra. Just as we may identify Agamemnon as part villain because he sacrifices his daughter, we can also identify Queen Clytaemnestra as part villain in murdering her husband. Similarly, just as Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter for what he thought was a good cause, Queen Clytaemnestra killed Agamemnon in order avenge her daughter’s death, which can also be perceived as a heroic act.  This duality of villain and hero also holds true in Electra and Oreste’s murder of Queen Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus in The Libation Bearers, as Electra drives Orestes to murder their mother and Aegisthus to avenge their father’s death.

          Again, unlike Romanticism in which the heroes and villains are clearly contrasted and defined, tragedy illustrates the complexity of humanity and the mixed nature of individuals. Identifying the both good and bad qualities in the characters in Aeschylus’ The Oresteia Trilogy and examining the duality of their nature helped me to understand how tragedy in the literary sense differs from tragedy in the popular sense, as the characters possess both good and bad qualities, and the tragedy in the play is not simply an accident or act of misfortune, but instead a result of human actions driven by mixed nature.

          The mixed nature of humanity as a defining feature of tragedy is also portrayed in Wole Soyinka’s play Death and the King’s Horseman, and perhaps most powerfully through the characters Elesin Oba, the Horseman of the King who is meant to perform ritual suicide, and Simon Pilkings, the British District Officer who initially prevents the suicide from taking place. At the start of the play, the king of Yoruba has died and according to Yoruba culture and tradition, Elesin is to commit suicide to accompany the king to the next world in order to sustain cosmic order. Elesin first appears to be a good horseman, as he is characterized as “a man of enormous vitality, speaks, dances and sings with that infectious enjoyment in life which accompanies all his actions” (5). Elesin also recognizes all of the privileges he has enjoyed in his position: “In all my life / As horseman of the King, the juiciest / Fruit on every tree was mine. I saw, / I touched, I wooed, rarely was the answer No” (13-14). Therefore, Elesin’s good qualities are apparent from the start, as he acknowledges his privileges, is honored to be in his position, and is confident in his readiness to commit suicide and accompany the king. However, consistent with Aristotle’s Poetics, which states that tragedy must involve a man “who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty,” Elesin is also a character of mixed nature.

Although Elesin proclaims readiness, he is still attached to the material world and insists that because he is making a sacrifice for his people, he deserves to make a beautiful girl his bride before his departure. Ultimately Elesin’s attachment to the world and his request to marry delays his action and contributes to his failure to complete the ritual, which will disrupt the cosmic order. As Tanure Ojaide states in his essay, “Death and the King’s Horseman in the classroom,” “[Elesin] hadn’t the will to die because of his attachment to material things—market, fine clothes, and a young woman. To understand the play as a tragedy, I impress it on my students that Elesin’s failure is not refusing to die, but not dying at the appropriate moment” (119). In other words, Elesin has good qualities because he is willing to commit the ritual and accompany the king, but he has bad qualities too, or an “error or frailty,” as he delays in his action and fails to commit the ritual at the time in which he should have in order to maintain order, and his delay allows enough time for the British officer Simon Pilkings to intervene.

          British Officer Pilkings hears of the ritual suicide and is resolute in his mission to stop it from taking place. It’s easy to label Pilkings as a villain, especially from a cultural perspective, because his belief that a ritual suicide is barbaric is both ethnocentric and hypocritical, as “[his] men have orders to shoot at the first sign of trouble” after he’s detained Elesin, and “to prevent one death [he] will actually make other deaths” (59). However, in Pilkings’ conversation with Elesin, we understand that Pilkings’ intentions were in fact good and that he genuinely believed he was saving Elesin’s life. When Elesin tells Pilkings, “You have shattered the peace of the world forever. There is no sleep in the world tonight” Pilkings responds, “It is still a good bargain if the world should lose one night’s sleep as the price of saving a man’s life” (50). Here, it is clear that Pilkings isn’t an utter villain and does have good qualities and intentions, but because he does not understand, and consequently does not respect, the Yoruba culture, he has not saved Elesin’s life, but destroyed it. As a result of Elesin’s mixed nature and his delay in committing the ritual, and Pilkings’ mixed nature and action in stopping the ritual from taking place, Elesin’s son commits suicide in Elesin’s place, and upon seeing his dead son, Elesin commits suicide by strangling himself with chains. Therefore, unlike the popular sense of the word tragedy that involves an accident in which a bad thing happens to a good person, the tragedy in Death and the King’s Horseman, like the tragedies in The Oresteia Trilogy, is a result of characters of mixed nature and their human actions.

          In addition to mixed characterizations, The Oresteia Trilogy and Death and the King’s Horseman also meet in many other ways in terms of tragedy as a literary genre. For example, both plays begin “with a problem or conflict that is significant to society, its leaders, or its representatives,” or in other words, problems of the plays’ tragic heroes “are not just personal problems but affect the entire city, state, or society.” Both works are also “founded on the story of a few houses [i.e. families]” and involve “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude” (Aristotle). Furthermore, both plays exemplify Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory that the two opposing, but complimentary states of Dionysus and Apollo meet in tragedy. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche postulates that tragedy is a work of art that is both Dionysiac and Apolline.  Apollo, the god of light and justice, represents order, and Dionysus, the god of wine, represents chaos. Nietzsche uses the two gods as symbols that “walk side by side, usually in violent opposition to one another, inciting one another to ever more powerful births, perpetuating the struggle of the opposition only apparently bridged by the word ‘art’…” (14). Apollo and Dionysus as symbols in a dialectic of two distinct but complementary styles of art that meet in tragedy are certainly identifiable in both The Oresteia Trilogy and Death and the King’s Horseman. The first two parts of The Oresteia Trilogy involve the chaos of individuals taking matters into their own hands, but ends in order with the establishment of the court, and Death and the King’s Horseman involves the chaos of Elesin and Pilkings disrupting the ritual suicide of the Yoruba culture, and ends with Elesin’s son sacrificing himself in place of his father to reestablish the order.  

All things considered, examining the mixed characterization in the works of Aeschylus and Soyinka and learning that this characterization of humanity is the main distinction of tragedy has been incredibly helpful in defining tragedy as a literary genre, as well as in developing a better understanding of why tragedy is regarded as the most universal genre. Contrasting with unrealistic, romantic characters that are entirely good, or entirely bad, tragedy paints a more realistic portrait of humanity by emphasizing the mixed nature of individuals, and by illustrating the flawed world we live in as a result of our own actions. Furthermore, studying a Greek Tragedy written in 458 BCE alongside a play written by an Nigerian playwright in 1975 and identifying how these works meet more than they diverge, shows that by simply being human, despite the era or part of the world in which we live, we can all relate to the human condition as imperfect, of mixed nature, and flawed, which establishes the universality of tragedy. Or as John Buice fluently states in his essay “The Tragic Irony of Irony in Tragedy,” “Tragedy is a universal expression and explication of our basic human condition.”

Research Plan: Guerilla Theater

          During our second discussion of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, we learned of Soyinka’s political activities, and it was mentioned briefly that he was involved with “guerilla theater” in modern Africa. I was immediately intrigued by the idea of an unexpected theatrical performance in a public space as a form of political protest, or as a means of raising social awareness, and became interested in further exploring this subject.

For this semester’s research project, I plan to do two research posts on guerilla theater. My first post will center on exploring the origins of the term, the practice, and the most widely documented or recognized guerilla performances. In my second research post, I plan to either focus on one guerilla performance group in particular, such as the feminist activist group “Guerilla Girls,” or perhaps, explore and survey more generally the extent to which guerilla theater still thrives in modern societies.