I've realized something about tragedy throughout the week: I think tragedy is inevitable in life. No matter how much you work for what you want, you are bound to experience struggles and downfalls, which is seen clearly in Antigone. She worked so hard to save her brother's integrity but ended committing suicide. On the opposite side, Antigone's sister, Ismene, didn't do anything but sit back and let it happen. She was then left with no family and no pride because she didn't do anything to help. So my question about this is if there's a happy medium where people do what they desire without so many consequences, or should people just accept that tragedies will occur?
The man in Kafka's parable only wants one thing: to enter through the gates that are being guarded by the doorkeepers. At first, it seems like the man in doing anything he can to get through the gates, it says he "sacrifices all he has, no matter how valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper." However, later it says that he would sit and watch the doorkeeper continuously, not doing anything but talking or mumbling. So he spent his entire life trying to accomplish one thing. He tried different ways to do it to no prevail. I think this just goes to show that tragedy will happen, no matter how much you have tried, or lack of there of. I do not, however, think this is a bad thing. Tragedy is something to be learned from, not something that should ever keep you from accomplishing what you want in life.
0 Comments
Growing up, if you're anything like me, you learned to follow the rules. If you did as you were told, you would do great things in life. Rules are there for a reason anyways, right? They're made to avoid mistakes and keep people happy. But in the grand spectrum, how perfect can rules actually be? Everyone will always have different opinions. I mean, one example is slavery, that was somehow legal. It was actually a rule that owning a human being to do whatever you wanted was completely okay. We all know now that that rule was insane and definitely not okay. This just makes me think, "What other rules was I raised to follow that might be better off broken?"
What sparked all of these thoughts in my mind was reading Antigone and how strongly she felt about burying her brother. She knew in her heart that giving him a proper grave was worth breaking Kreon's rules, no matter what the consequence was. She was actually willing to die to protect her brother, who was already dead might I add. She really was doing the right thing. The tricky side of this situation is brought to light when Haimon says, "She wouldn’t leave him for the dogs’ and crows’ butchering. Shouldn’t her fate be golden glory? Isn’t she worthy?” (lines 846-848) because her fate definitely was not golden glory. She definitely would not be rewarded for doing the right thing, actually she was going to be killed because the "right thing" was against the law and in the end Antigone decided to kill herself. This is obviously not a happy ending, anything with someone feeling the need to kill themselves isn't. She died, though, because she knew what was right and what was right was not what the law said "Reading Three" by Joseph Krutch started out with a quote from Aristotle: "Tragedy, said Aristotle, is the 'imitation of noble actions,'" stated Krutch. I found this to be a really interesting way to start out the entire piece, especially since he later wrote that what Aristotle said was completely incorrect. I think the reason Krutch decided to write that it is false, though, opens up a new idea. Krutch says, "no one knows what a noble action is or whether or not such a thing as nobility exists in nature apart from the mind of man." and it's true, what makes one thing noble and the next thing merely the right thing to do? This idea in itself is tragic. People look for hope in the world, we like to hear about good and happy things, but suddenly the idea of someone being noble and knightly is shut down. Somehow, though, people still strive for this characteristic. People still want to be this heroic figure even though, according to Joseph Krutch, it doesn't really exist.
This brings back my thought from a previous blog post about tragedy being something brought on by a human's personal thoughts and actions. People work so hard to try and be their ideal person, most likely someone strong and powerful, only to find themselves living a tragic life full of incomplete goals. When people work toward the impossible, and yet high desired lifestyle, they end up being full of despair. Everyone likes to be independent. We grow up excited to one day move out of our childhood home and have a grown-up job. We like to decide where we are going and what we are doing. The weird thing about this is how much the choices we make aren't actually ours. We don't think about how much the outside world influences us because we don't notice it affecting us for the most part. I started to understand this idea when Dan Ariely mentioned it in his TED Talk. He explained a situation when people were given three different choices. One cost a small amount and the other two cost the same, the catch is that one of them included more product. Obviously on one picked the more expensive choice with less product, but the majority of people did pick the more expensive option still. When the test was done on a separate group of people but without the second option, more people picked the less expensive choice. I honestly found this so fascinating. In the first test people were so caught up at realizing how good of a "deal" the third choice was that they ended up paying more for it. Where in the other test people didn't have a chance to see how good of a deal it was and didn't feel inclined to pay more. This is just one example of people making a decision based on something around them. The majority of people were willing to pay more for something they didn't need just because they thought it was a good deal. This makes me think about all of the coupons in magazines and the mail stores send out. They aren't trying to help you save money, they're trying to get you to spend money on things you wouldn't typically need, but now they're only half the price. No matter how strong of a human you are, you can't help but let your mind fall to random things that change what we think and do.
Oedipus Rex is a prime example of a tragic story, filled with so much irony that it is almost comical. The plot twists in and out in a way that captures the reader, but the piece ends in a not-so-fortunate way. The play is basically about a man named Oedipus, who grew up making all possible efforts to avoid his prophecy of killing his father. On the other side of the story, his wife, Jocasta, tried her hardest to avoid her prophecy of marrying her son. Spoiler alert: Jocasta is also Oedipus's mother and Oedipus killed his father, so they both fulfilled their prophecies.
Obviously, this is a little sad and a lot strange. They both worked so hard to avoid something that they couldn't see it happening right in front of there lives. I mean, Oedipus literally married his mom. People don't really do that when they know what's going on. At one point Oedipus believed he had defeated his prophecy, saying, "they declared I'd kill my father, who is dead and buried now, while I am here without a weapon, innocent". He saw so much hope for himself, but in reality the man who raised him was not actually his father. This starts to create a type of parallel tragedy, meaning there are now two separate tragedies that fall back onto the same person. Oedipus realizes he had not prevented his prophecy and quickly understands that his wife hadn't either: "They said that Laius father him(Oedipus), but one within would tell the story best- your wife." Oedipus obviously became quite angry with his wife/mom. He went to kill her and found her already dead, she had hung herself. He then decided to shove pins into his eyes to blind himself. Oedipus revealed to the audience how tragedy is a mix of fait and one's own personal actions. He knew these things were to happen, however when he tried to make them stop he ended up causing more chaos and struggle in his life. People want to be successful in life. Why would anybody deny the chance to have everything they want in life? They would be crazy to do so. But what exactly does success mean? The actual definition is to accomplish your goals. People typically attach this to the idea that each person's goal is to have lots of money and wealth, right? When someone says, "Oh, they are so successful" your mind instantly goes to something along the lines of "they must be so rich and powerful." What if your goal is to achieve happiness or open your own small business? Those things don't necessarily entail that you have an over flowing bank account.
This all plays into a whole other idea about how much success one can actually have. Can you have all you want in life without eliminating at least one thing? Alain de Botton says in his TED Talk, "any vision of success has to admit what it's losing out on, where the element of loss is." This contradicts many people's idea that success means to have it all. In a time where everyone is wrapped up in making sure they have the most perfect life, we all know that it is not actually possible. There always has to be some bit of failure or a place where you didn't completely succeed. With this being said though, earlier in Botton's talk he brought up the idea that just because Hamlet may have failed, doesn't mean he is a total failure. Hamlet is still an iconic character created by Shakespeare that will not be forgotten anytime soon and the story is most definitely considered a success. Just because he things didn't turn out just how he wanted them, Hamlet still got attention and success for years and years. The idea that tragedy relates to each and every person in one way or another is a bit confusing, especially when you think about how long people have been on the Earth. People live extremely different lives now, between technology and our fast paced lifestyle there seems to be little in common between the 21st Century and Ancient Greece.
Arthur Miller looks at this idea in his article "Tragedy and the Common Man". He talks about how even a long time ago, it didn't seem like tragedies would relate to everyone, saying tragedies were "enacted by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations" even though average people live extremely different lives than people of royal descent. People were working long, hard hours of the day just to make a living, while kings and queens had servants waiting on them at all times. This helps us see the big picture of how tragedy affects everyone in a slightly smaller window. We know that even with such major differences between people and their societies, we all have similar hardships. So then, what are these hardships and where do they come from? One of the biggest things that stays constant throughout all of the ages is people's need to be better. Whether it be better at their job, their favorite hobby, or maybe even to just be a better person in general. People work hard toward things they want to be succeed in. Miller says in his piece that "Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly." Meaning each and every person creates their own tragedies inside of themselves because of their constant desire to always improve. Through trying to always change our path in order to get a different out come, we make choices that create our own tragedies. The phrase "don't judge someone until you've walked a few miles in their shoes" comes to mind when I think about tragedy. I kind of draw a blank when I try to remember tragedies in my own life. I can really only think of the times I might have used the word "tragedy", but only to exaggerate the situation. This got me thinking that maybe tragedy is different for everyone. Everyone lives their own lives and therefore, have different struggles. Why then, is tragedy such a popular topic for authors? Why has it lasted for over 2500 years if everyone in modern day has different experiences, let alone people from so long ago? What makes it so interesting that pieces written around the idea are still discussed in classrooms today?
When I looked into what a tragedy actually is, I saw that Wikipedia defines it as "a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences". So yikes, this is basically saying that people enjoy reading tragedy so much because we enjoy hearing about "human suffering". That really doesn't sound too great. But when I actually put thought into this, I realized that nobody wants to read about how pretty and perfect someone's life is. It's not new or intriguing. We like to hear about other people's difficult times because we, as readers, need to see that other people have imperfections. We need to create a connection between the storyline and our real lives, even if they aren't completely parallel. Tragedies written in ancient Greece by Euripides and Sophocles to pieces by Shakespeare and Schiller continue to connect to modern authors like August Strindberg. This is all because of they all consistently revolve around the topics of negotiation, challenges, and cultural change/experimentation (Tragedy, Wikipedia). Even through the different lifestyles and people that lived through each time period, storylines with tragic themes remain strong and relevant. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |