Today in AP lit, we finished the story "Oedipus Rex". I have to admit if was a very interesting tale. It's one of those stories that is just really unfortunate, you know, a tragedy. It's an old Greek tale, so it's obviously very far fetched and over the top. Oedipus tries really hard to avoid a prophecy, and still falls into it.
It was said that Oedipus was kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus then leaves his home to avoid this. Little does he know, the people that have been raising him aren't really his parents. He ends up meeting his father on a road and killing him due to an insult. He goes on to the town of Thebes and marries his mother because she was in the royal family. The tragedy gets even worse when Jocasta (Oedipus' mother/wife) figures this out and takes her own life. Oedipus then blinds himself and wants to be exiled. Oedipus deliberately tried to get out of the way of the prophecy, but by doing that he somehow walked right into it.
The story seemed kind of far fetched and weird, but it does possess some good qualities. I suppose the abnormality is chiefly due to it being Greek, but it's still silly to me. How does Oedipus try to avoid the prophecy by killing his dad, but then be completely okay with just killing another guy he sees. If it were me I would be more careful about that. I would try to avoid killing anyone. Not just because it's immoral, but because I like to take extra precautions. I suppose that's what happens when you don't take care of your children. The lesson I learned is take responsibility early on so you don't have to worry about it later.
The main tragedy is that his intentions were good, and it still ended up like this. If he had just done this, it may have just been a horror story. Since he went out of his way to avoid it and was still ruined by it makes it really sad. The metaphor behind it all is that man is limited and trying to exceed those limits leads to consequences.
In Arthur Miller's "Tragedy and the Common Man", he talks about how sometimes it is seen that only royalty are fit for tragedy, but he believes that to be wrong. It applies to everyone in similar emotional situations. He explains it as something that the public would not be able to cherish if it were not able to feel it. We would not even know what it is or what it felt like were we not able to experience it.
Miller also explains a major principle he has: tragic feelings are felt when we know someone who is willing to end their life for the sake of dignity. He said these events spiral from the wound of indignity. Tragedy is the result of our compulsion to evaluate ourselves justly. Whether you have never sought it before or are seeking it again, this is what tragedy comes from.
To me, this all seemed pretty obvious. That could just be because I have been researching tragedy and watched a very informative Ted Talk about it. I thought the author tried to hard by using big words and drawn out sentences to make a point that seemed rather pronounced to begin with. I think there was some solid information, but a lot of beating around the bush.
When we think of tragedy, we think of loss. It could be losing someone important, something important, or even yourself. However, what if tragedy as a device was used to make a point? Today in class, we watched a Ted Talk about success and failure and one of the things he said that really stuck out to me was that he said something along the lines of "Hamlet was not a loser, but he lost.". This is what tragedy shows us. Labeling people as losers is unfair because there are so many variables in life that until we know their complete story, we can't make any judgments about their merit. Hamlet lost many things in the story, but that certainly doesn't make him a loser. When something tragic happens to you, you lost; but would you find it fair for someone to then call you a loser because of it?
Now obviously you'd never call someone a loser because one of their family members died (I hope), but it draws a good comparison. Calling someone a loser because they're poor or don't have nice possessions is not all that different from that. The man in the Ted Talk said many people are "Snobs". We make generalizations about people without knowing their complete story. There could be a million reasons someone is poor. We go so far as to call someone a loser based on their financial status. He also says the only reason people buy nice things is because they are afraid of what other people will think, which makes sense considering what I said earlier.
The Ted Talk also said that the fear of failure is the fear of ridicule. We feel that we will be judged by the public when we fail. This itself is a tragedy to me. I know i'm guilty of it, but it provides so many limitations. There's no argument society would be better off without it.
In literature, a tragedy is something that an author can really use to their advantage. They can really pick you up, and then throw you back down with a sudden plot twist that really makes the mood of the story more melancholy. There are plenty of advantages to it, but I feel like the greatest of them is to suck readers in. When authors leave it at a tragedy, you want to know if it gets better. You want to know if the story ever bounces back, or if it just ends tragic.
Tragedy has been used in literature since extremely far back in time. "Oedipus" is a famous example of a myth that is involved with tragedy. This story was written in 500 B.C. The tragedy is that Oedipus' mom takes her own life (after having children with Oedipus) and Oedipus then gouges his eyes out and ends up dead. The idea of tragedy is something that not all people understand. Many people are quite confused by this story, and rightfully so. This is pretty messed up to read, so imagine how the daughter of this incestuous relationship felt. She felt even worse when her two brothers killed each other, and one was denied a proper burial. That was a pretty big deal in that culture. Antigone was definitely on the receiving end of some very tragic events.
I feel that when I read this, I feel bad for her and want to keep reading to figure out what happens to her. Finding out about these terrible things instantly puts me on her side, and when you're on the side of the protagonist, you want to finish the story and find out whether or not they make it out. The quality of the writing tends to matter less when you become attached to the main character.