Jeanette Smith

27 February 2016

Web Highlights

Voices and Views in Tragedy & African Studies

            To study great ancient literature of Western Civilization with great modern literature from Africa has proved both fascinating and challenging.  In this class so far, I found it intriguing to observe a connection in the way these texts showed the greatness of humanity being revealed by human failure. This idea bound the two literatures together for me. Still I knew that there was much more to be discovered.  Since it is still early in my studies, I was eager to hear the voices and discover the views of previous students of Tragedy and Africa.  I chose to read three 2011 midterm submissions—all different but all with something important to say.

          The first midterm submission that I read was “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ..,” written by Jayson Hawkins. In his essay, he states that “In the Oresteia, Aeschylus presents a story arc that opens with a societal problem...and ends with a solution—the advent of modernity that allows man to escape Fate via a rational choice of his own Free Will.” I found this interesting, particularly his idea of modernity surfacing in ancient Greek plays such as the Oresteia. Jayson also posits that “the problem originates in the older generation (Agamemnon) and comes to its resolution with the younger (Orestes).” He points out how Orestes (representing modernity) became the problem-solver for Agamemnon (representing tradition). In the Oresteia, a problem arose: Who would carry out the vengeance that ancient Greek society demanded? The burden to solve this problem is placed on Orestes, Agamemnon’s only son. He defies Fate as he willingly chooses to be the instrument of justice that avenges his father’s murder.

           While Jayson does not discuss Death and the King’s Horseman in his essay, he helped me see how his idea can easily fit into a modern African text as well.  For instance, Olunde (an only son like Orestes), also willingly chooses to be an instrument of justice, but unlike Orestes, he must sacrifice his life to accomplish this. Despite the fact that he left his traditional culture to study in the West, he returns home to become the proxy for his helpless father, Elesin. Olunde’s suicide fulfills his father’s obligation to traditional African culture. Like Orestes, Olunde willingly assumes the burden, as the closest male kinsman, to solve a problem that his father is unable to solve himself.

          In Joffrion Beasley’s midterm contribution, “The Tragedy of Women,” he explores “gender roles and how language and tragedy help define the place of women in both the ancient world and in Africa.”  He argues that “with the Greeks’ focus on honor, reason, and the battle—all of which are primarily male values—society’s role for women became marginalized.”  He goes on to claim that “within their confined and male-defined roles, they [women] continue to resist and fight against their oppressors.  They do so by using the only characteristics available to them: male qualities.”  While he does not discuss the Oresteia in his essay, his idea resonates in the play. I can see this particularly in Agamemnon’s female character, Cassandra. She, despite her degraded status as a slave, is given a strong prophetic voice to speak against her patriarchal society. Her speech becomes a powerful moment in the play as she fights her oppressors with her only weapon—her voice. Joffrion says that “the inversion of power structures is also evident in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman.  Early on, when Elesin teases the women and Iyaloja, they automatically feel as though they were the cause of Elesin’s displeasure.  This is the patriarchal disempowerment of females by males in dominant power positions.  Iyaloja, though, uses her place in Elesin’s power structure to warn him that his behavior is not right, that his impulsive sexuality will cause harm to all of their people.”  This idea helped me to see that even though the market women did appear submissive in the marketplace exchange with Elesin, they later took on a more dominant role in their spirited exchange with Amusa. I appreciated Joffrion’s suggestion that Iyaloja used her position in society to reprimand Elesin.  Like Cassandra, her strong words of warning allowed her to assume a powerful position in the play.

          Finally, in John Buice’s essay, “The Tragic Irony of Irony in Tragedy,” he makes an observation that I thought was profound: “I have found that Tragic literature, so far, is a rather enlightening and optimistic genre rather than pessimistic and nihilistic. Studying Greek and African Tragedy provided me with the opportunity to find my own place within a shared experience of other people by connecting and empathizing to characters two millennia ago and in cultures utterly foreign to mine. Their tragedies are mine, and mine theirs; there can be nothing more human than that.”  John’s statement helps me to understand more fully that great tragedies, whether ancient Greek or modern African, are stories of the human experience. They express the timeless battles between our destinies and our free wills, our sense of honor and dishonor, and our conceptions about gender roles within our own societies. As John points out, these stories are our stories—an idea that I suspect will make this class a rich and rewarding experience. My discoveries after reading other students’ midterm essays is a testimony to the power of dialogue between ancient and modern literature and, as I am discovering, the power of dialogue between readers, both past and present.

Unmerited Fortunes in the Oresteia and Death of the King’s Horseman

          Literature is filled with a variety of characters. Some of those characters we are quick to label as either virtuous or villainous. We tend to love one and hate the other. I have discovered that one of the most interesting aspects of studying Tragedy and Africa has been the idea that the greatest literary tragedies do not give us simple characters that can be easily defined. Instead, they give us real characters whose lives reveal the mixed aspects of our own humanity. Tragedy does not offer the reader simple characters because humans are not simple. Instead, we are given characters who reflect the greatest and the worst in all of us.

          Aristotle suggests in his Poetics that the greatness of humanity is revealed by human failure and that the “the downfall of the utter villain” might “satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited fortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves” (13B). Great tragic characters cause us to view them with pity because we know all too well that we are capable of making the same damaging choices that they make.

           Tragedy is also described by Aristotle as art that imitates life. This is what makes this genre so compelling as an art form—its characters imitate us. In both the ancient Greek Oresteia Trilogy by Aeschylus and the modern African play Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka, their characters validate ideas of great tragedy even though these two texts are separated by vast differences in time and culture.

          For example, at the beginning of the Oresteia, we see Agamemnon at his best—an honorable king returning home triumphantly from war. But it doesn’t take long to view him at his worst. The reader learns that while away at sea, a storm arises, and Agamemnon is forced to make a difficult decision: Should he sacrifice his young daughter, Iphigenia, in order to calm a storm which would cause certain death for his large troop of men? When faced with his dilemma, Agamemnon asks himself, “Which of my options is not evil? / How can I just leave this fleet / and let my fellow warriors down? (247-49). His choice turns him, momentarily, from a good man into a man whose “spirits changed, and his intentions became profane, unholy, unsanctified (256-57). Does the reader have to decide if his decision to sacrifice his own child makes him a monster or a man who is wisely protecting the lives of many? With tragedy, the reader is not asked to make the choice. We are asked instead to see him as a product of his “mixed humanity.”

          This idea of mixed humanity also appears when we encounter Agamemnon’s wife, Clytaemnestra. When she murders her husband in revenge for the killing of their daughter, the prophetess, Cassandra, offers the following condemnation of her: “What new agony inside the house / is she preparing? Something monstrous / barbaric, evil . . . beyond all love / all remedy” (1299-1302).  Even though we know murder is wrong, the reader can perhaps sympathize with Clytaemnestra because she is a grieving mother. Her pain is real and seen as she laments: “He [Agamemnon] sacrificed/his own child, that dear girl I bore in pain/ to charm the winds from Thrace—and didn't care.” (1674-76). I see in her both aspects of the Apolline and Dionysiac qualities presented in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. She displays an Apolline “peaceful stillness” (16) at the beginning of the play, but she also shows her Dionysiac nature when she gives in to “the supreme gratification of the primal” (17) by eagerly murdering her husband: “He [Agamemnon] collapsed, snorting his life away / spitting great gobs of blood all over me / drenching me in showers of his dark blood / And I rejoiced” (1640-43). Both Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra represent tragedy’s mixed humanity—they are flawed characters who become recipients of Aristotle’s “unmerited fortune.”

          The beauty of tragedy is that it is able to journey through time from ancient Greece to modern-day Africa without losing its power. In Death and the King’s Horseman, the same idea of flawed humans who earn unmerited fortunes can be seen by looking at the life of its protagonist, Elesin, the proud king’s horseman. Similar to the Oresteia, this play is a story about the tragic happenings within an important family. According to Aristotle in his Poetics, this is an important aspect of the best tragedies (13C).

          At the beginning of Death and the King’s Horseman, Elesin, like Agamemnon, appears as an honorable man with an elevated position in the community, and like Agamemnon, he, too, is faced with a difficult choice. His choice is not whether or not to kill his child to save others as Agamemnon’s had been. But ironically, the plot does work itself out to a similar end—Elesin’s actions do inadvertently cause his child’s death.  At first, he is committed wholly to the task that his society demands of him. Then he encounters a beautiful young village woman in the marketplace. Immediately his eyes “roll like a bush-rat” (13) and his sexual impulses take control when he sees her “thighs whose ripples shame the river’s” (15). At this point, he cannot control his Dionysiac nature, and his desire for the girl and the hubris that he must sire another son become his fatal flaws. Because Elesin chooses desire and pride over duty, he suffers a terrible misfortune despite the fact that his son, Olunde, claims with pride that “his [Elesin’s] will-power has always been enormous” (Soyinka 45).

          It’s easy to see the tragic connection between the Oresteia and Death of the King’s Horseman. Agamemnon, Clytaemnestra, and Elesin—all mixed characters who possess traits, both good and bad. It is by their unwise choices that they unknowingly create unmerited fortunes for both themselves and those they love the most. Their lives represent what Aristotle calls “circumstances which strike us as terrible or pitiful” (14B).  These tragic characters cause us to tremble because they paint for us a portrait of reality that inspires us to both fear and pity them, and in doing so, we also fear and pity ourselves. Still, there is something positive about seeing characters and ourselves as mixed humanity. Aristotle calls the portrait that tragedy paints for us as “a likeness which is true to life and yet more beautiful” (15B).

                                      Research Paper Proposal

          I am interested in writing a research essay exploring female characters in both ancient Greek and African tragedies.  Of course, I want to use as many of the texts that we will be reading in class that I can (Even though I have not read Antigone, I know that I want to explore her for sure).

          Some of ideas that I was considering exploring are:  What connections can be made between the women in classical tragedies and modern African tragedies? In what way do these females evoke both fear and pity in readers? Should female characters be considered more “tragic” than male characters?

          Do I need to focus on one female from Greek and one from African tragedy or would it be alright to include many? I am very early in my research and am not sure if the questions that I have can solidify into a cohesive essay. Since I am still very early in my planning, any input from you would be greatly appreciated.

                                       Preliminary Works Cited

Chanter, Tina. Whose Antigone? The Tragic Marginalization of Slavery. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 2011. MLA International Bibliography. Web.     

Kirkpatrick, Jennet. “The Prudent Dissident: Unheroic Resistance in Sophocles' Antigone”. The Review of Politics 73.3 (2011): 401–424. Web.

Markell, Patchen. “Tragic Recognition: Action and Identity in Antigone and Aristotle”. Political Theory 31.1 (2003): 6–38. Web.

Saxonhouse, Arlene W. “From Tragedy to Hierarchy and Back Again: Women in Greek Political Thought”. The American Political Science Review 80.2 (1986): 403–418. Web.

 Van Weyenberg, Astrid. The Politics of Adaptation: Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2013. MLA International Bibliography. Web.