Tragedy Essay!

Since I'm still working on my tragic creation, I've decided to upload my essay for my classmates to see!  Enjoy!

Greek Tragedy in Today’s Theatre and Life

The way tragedy is presented, and what it means, has changed drastically over time.  In the time of the Greeks, tragedy was, for a very long time, a one-person activity, accompanied by a chorus.  With the coming of Sophocles, it changed to a two to three person activity, complete with a set.  Apart from changes in format, the very definition of a tragedy changed during the long span of time between the era of Sophocles and Shakespeare.  Ancient Greek tragedies, such as Oedipus Rex, were seen by Aristotle as “the perfect tragedy” but modern people have a new vision of what is a tragedy.  What is not so easily seen is that the tragedies of the Ancient Greeks and their elements have a lasting influence on modern tragedies and life.  

            There are many individuals who believe that the modern use of the word “tragedy” is misguided.  One of the main proponents of this is the 1940s drama critic Joseph Krutch, who criticizes the current definition of tragedies in his essay “The Tragic Fallacy”.  He believes in the “old” idea of tragedy – where the protagonist is someone in a high place, who has a “tragic flaw” and falls down hard.  He states that “Nobility is inseparable from tragedy, which cannot exist without it” (Krutch).   His argument has some merits.  Nobility has a strong standing in tragedy, but tragedy can be and is preformed without it.  Today, nobility is almost never present in tragedy.  This change is in no way bad.  The characters have changed, but the key elements still have a large role today.  These new characters connect the viewer more, but don’t detract from the overall message of the play, because the main characters still will almost always have a “fatal flaw”, much like Greek tragedies.

In Tragedy and the Common Man, playwright Arthur Miller voices this argument that “The common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” (Miller).  Nowadays, with royalty nearly nonexistent, tragedies can be and are about anyone, anywhere.  As long as a character has a “tragic flaw”, anyone from a homeless man to a priest can be a protagonist in a tragedy.  By having a normal human be a protagonist, the audience can more easily relate to them, as opposed to trying to relate with a king.   In a 1998 Washington Post article, Doom is Blooming, Lloyd Rose speaks about how Greek tragedy is resurfacing.  While audiences still see the plays, and connect with the plots to some degree, he draws a contrast between Greek plays and Shakespearean plays.  He states that “there is awful emotional resolution when Othello kills Desdemona; there isn’t when Medea slaughters her children – it’s just unrelievedly horrible” (Rose).  Greek tragedies don’t focus at all on emotional aspects – they focus on the descent of the character, no matter how horrifying it is.  Modern tragedies, from the Renaissance and onward, focus more on a personal connection to the viewer – generally through an emotional resolution, like in Romeo and Juliet.  Rose offers another perspective:  “The central question that powers modern drama – ‘What happens next’ – is irrelevant.  What Greek tragedy says instead, in the most terrible way possible, is ‘What is happening now?’…Greek Tragedy is more psychologically penetrating than any of the more ‘realistic’ drama that follows” (Rose).  Greek tragedy is both of these, although some might argue with Greek tragedy being more “psychologically penetrating” than modern tragedies.    

While there are and always will be differences between Greek plays and modern plays, some plays bridge this gap.  Timothy Sexton addresses this in Tragedy in Classic and Contemporary Drama, where he points out that several plays contain elements of both types of tragedy.  He speaks about A Raisin in the Sun and Oedipus Rex, claiming they have many similarities.  Upon inspection, they both do indeed have a very similar element – the fatal flaw.  This theme, a fatal flaw, has presided in theatre as long as it has been around; in this case, the flaw is hubris.  There are probably countless other such comparisons, but the point is that Greek elements have been and will be in the foreseeable future, an integral part of theatre.

Outside of theatre, some of these elements are present in everyday life.  Especially with the financial crisis, “tragic flaws” are becoming a hot topic of discussion.  In particular, CEO’s on Wall Street are being blamed of, among other things, hubris.  In Victor Niederhoffer’s On Wall Street, Pride Signals Fall, he states that “The sense of being above the world, illustrated nicely by the story of Icarus, seems basic to corporate hubris” (Niederhoffer).  This hubris, a common theme in Greek tragedy, applies directly to real life.  People and corporations that are high up, so high that they can’t possibly fall, do.  And when they do, everyone panics, much like in Greek tragedies.  The author points out that as hubris gets greater in real life, the companies the people represent tend to do badly, as shown with the Enron scandal.  Greek tragedy today, while not as present as modern tragedy in the theatrical aspect, still has themes that are very much alive.  Simply look at a newspaper, with headlines speaking of executives who thought they were immune to the risks of the world and made bad decisions.

Tragedy reveals a fatal flaw in mankind.  Whether it is the hubris from Oedipus Rex or the impulsive nature of Romeo and Juliet, tragedy always contains these flaws.  Tragedy reveals  fatal flaws through the actions of the characters, although in Greek plays this is pre-determined, where in modern plays the character take certain actions that lead to their downfall.  In the end, the flaw is revealed and the outcome depends on the play.  Where in Romeo and Juliet, both the protagonists die, in Oedipus Rex the protagonist lives on, confronting his flaw, accepting and defeating it.  Tragedy takes many different forms throughout the ages, but the core, the spirit, is the same.