Tragedy is UnexpectedWe cannot control the tragic acts that befall upon us. Sometimes, we may be under the illusion that we are doing things to possibly prevent tragic incidents, but in the end, everyone will experience a sadness of some sort throughout their life, and I'm sure no one (at least initially) chooses to be sad, or makes unbeneficial choices that they know will make them sad. This idea shows what was mentioned in the Ted Talk by Ariely in the context of tragedy. It actually provided quite a bit of insight for better analyzing Oedipus Rex. Oedipus Rex thought he was making life choices that would prevent the larger tragedies predicted for him. Though he took many extreme measures, this did not stop any of the tragedies from occurring.
It's interesting how in control of the situation he thought he was and later how blind he was to not realize that the tragedy was playing out right in front of him. This caused me to reanalyze my definition of tragedy. I've realized that the unexpected aspect of tragedy is so crucial- how can something be tragic if the individual is totally prepared for it? I guess this means the only way we can truly prepare for life is to expect the unexpected.
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Oedipus Rex.The play Oedipus Rex had caused me to feel sympathy for more than one of the characters. From my last blog post on tragedy, this is the definition of tragic. To be honest, it was a little hard to feel sympathy for Oedipus since he was being so unkind, cruel and in a position of royalty. But the situations presented to him he did absolutely nothing to deserve, neither did Jocasta or the town.
Although, Arthur Miller did mention that the key to tragedy is making the character who is having tragic events happen to them relatable to the common man. This is imperative because for a character to be in a tragic situation, the reader has to see themselves in their position. This has to do with the sympathy aspect of tragedy. Unlike most people think, sympathy is not merely just feeling sorry for someone, but fear that you could possibly be in the same situation in the future. Since Oedipus was in a position of royalty, I could not relate to him or his problems. However I could feel a small amount of sympathy for him and his dire circumstance, especially when he was banished. So technically, Sophocles did succeed in his goal of writing a tragedy, even though he bypassed most of the normal criteria. Here is a separate definition of tragedy that I feel Sophocles followed in Oedipus Rex. https://www.britannica.com/art/tragedy-literature The definition of tragedy (for real this time)Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.
This is a quote from Arthur Miller's essay, "Tragedy and the Common Man". What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means tragedy definitely is not simply a man failing. Tragedy is often more the author trying to get the reader to develop some kind of fear and sympathy with a character. The author may try to provoke sympathy in many ways. The most common is by giving the character an undeserved punishment, most usually as a result of their response to a problem. As for fear, the author will try to get us to relate to the character by making them not too flawed but not perfect. By making the character relatable to the common man, it causes a fear that the same undeserved punishment inflicted upon the character is also possible in the reader's own life. As you can see, this definition of tragedy is much more complex than my earlier definition "a sad event". It's much more an interaction between character and author than I ever could have guessed. A kinder, gentler philosophy of successSuccess, in our society, is typically measured by position and title. From these pieces of information, we judge a person's yearly financial income, and from that number we assume their character and work ethic. It's difficult not to do this at times, as that is how our society has been conditioned and almost trained. But what are the consequences of these assumptions based on jobs? How much can we really determine about a person strictly from how they make their income?
It's off of this question that Alan de Botton creates the Ted Talk "A kinder, gentler version of success". He discuss the views of a common citizen in our society on jobs and the level of success of an individual can reach when forced under these assumptions by society. Real success, however, is measured on an individual's level of contemptment and purpose, he explains- to which I completely agree. My thoughts
Tragedy is sadness, but at a more complex level. Where sadness brings a feeling of unhappiness, tragedy brings a feeling of despair and woe. In a poetic sense, if tragedy could be felt like an emotion, it would cause the victim to feel as if they could never experience happiness again. However, even though tragedy has emotions to go along with it, it is typically used to describe an event. These events can be life changing or comically over dramatic, like the situation above. Wikipedia's thoughts Tragedy has two definitions. First is the most common type- an event that causes great suffering, destruction, and distress. An example of this would be a grave accident or natural disaster. The other definition is actually quite ironic. Tragedy is a form of drama, usually a classical piece that has influenced history in a dramatic way, not having to be sad or tragic in the least. In fact, tragedies were often comical pieces to the Greeks and Romans. For myself, I cannot decide which definition applies to literature more, as they both seem to be applicable as genres. |
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