Greek Tragedy Essay

Art and literature has existed throughout time to represent and express cultural values, ideals and perceptions. It often portrays the forces that push one’s particular culture onward, mentally stimulating and expanding individual mind and thought. In ancient Greek culture, Art and Literature is combined in a way that represented all of these things to its people. This combination is what we know as ancient Greek Theater, an art of drama and song, with the structure of â€Å"spoken portions interlaced with choral lyrics, all concerned with man’s fate. â€Å"1 Greek tragedy is credited to have developed around 534 B. C when the Greek Thespis created drama in which a main actor conversed with the leader of the chorus (this is where the term â€Å"thespian† originated, it has been used to describe an actor since the early 19th century). 2 Aeschylus, the first of the great 3 tragic poets, added a second actor to his plays and had a chorus of around 12. Sophocles, the second of the great poets, added the third actor and increased the chorus to 15 members. Sophocles is considered to model Greek tragedy, with Aeschylus marking the preparation and Eudripidies the decline. 3 These plays where preformed at Festivals in open-air theaters in which poets competed for prizes. It is widely accepted that these festivals where religious, and honored the Greek god Dionysius (God of Wine). All plays where developed around well-known ancient Greek myth, it was the Poets job to develop character and deepen plot. Each festival included 3 tragic poets to present a â€Å"tetrology. â€Å"(A group of 4 plays) which consisted of 3 tragedies and one satyr. 4 Each play would include anywhere from two to four actors, and an assembly of 12-15 choral members. It was each actor’s responsibility to display the plot through speech, however they where also responsible for singing solos. The chorus was an important tool in Greek tragedy as they commented on each scene and proposed subtleties to the audience, their song also heightened the emotion and atmosphere of the play. 5 Aristotle’s â€Å"Poetics† is considered the most valuable source of guidance for Greek tragedy. Aristotle defines tragedy as † a drama which concerned better than average people (hero’s, kings, gods) who suffer a transition from good fortune to bad fortune and who speak in an elevated language. † 6 It is also defined as † a literary composition written to be preformed by actors in which a central character, called the tragic protagonist or hero, suffers some serious misfortune which is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected with the hero’s actions. â€Å"7 The hero is often host to some â€Å"tragic flaw† (hermatia) for which he himself is responsible, and which leads to his eventual downfall. However, Aristotle describes this tragic flaw to lead to a mistake in which the Protagonist is not aware. The hero’s destruction is often due to his self-ignorance. It is important to understand what Aristotle believes is the purpose for Greek tragedy in order to completely understand some of its main aspects. In Aristotle’s opinion, one of the marks of great tragedy is its ability to create a Cartharsis, the act of purging the soul of â€Å"fear and pity. â€Å"8 Through creating a complex protagonist, a character who is seen as a great man, or â€Å"hero†, the audience in turn creates respect. Through this character’s tragic flaw, and ignorance to his actions, the audience is drawn and starts to pitty the hero. The audience imagines themselves in the hero’s situation, and although they know the outcome of the story (as all Greek tragedy is bases on well-known Greek myth) they suspensefuly await the hero’s reaction to his fate. So this â€Å"purging† allows the audience to shed excess fear, refreshing their conscience so that it can exist in a healthy balance. Aristotle theorized that â€Å"tragedy is rooted in the fundamental order of the universe. â€Å"9 Tragedy is a worse case scenario, which describes the possible effects of simple probability. It creates a â€Å"cause-and-effect chain† in which any individual can envision themselves as part of. We can now understand the importance of certain aspects of the tragic hero’s character and his responsibility to uphold the plot. â€Å"A hero, in the Greek sense, is a man who by his extraordinary career has pushed back the horizons of what is possible for humanity and is then deemed worthy of commendation after his death. â€Å"10 As we know, this hero is not flawless. However, it is important to realise that in what Aristotle values as good tragedy, these flaws often contribute to the very virtues which allow our protagonist to become a hero in the first place. In other words, tragic irony is implicated, and it is the same incidents and qualities of a man which catapult him to hero stature as those which drag him down. Tragedy is concerned with the fate of â€Å"big men. â€Å"11 Aristotle believed that Sophocles’, â€Å"Oedipus Rex† was the perfect tragedy. Why was Oedipus Rex in effect the perfect tragic hero? Oedipus was a great man and King of Thebes. He was self righteous, hasty and suspicious of his friends, but we also see that if it where not for these qualities Oedipus would not have continued with his inquiries. His heroic nature is magnified in his persistence for the truth despite the fact that it became quite obvious that gaining further knowledge would end in disaster and self-destruction. 12 Peripeteia is when a character produces â€Å"an effect opposite to that which he intended to produce. † 13Aristotle firmly believed that all good tragedy proposed some peripeteia within its plot. This is perfectly represented within â€Å"Oedipus Rex. † Oedipus promises his people that he will find the root of the plague that gripped his kingdom. In ancient Greek times, it was believed that illness and plague where signs from the gods that they where upset or a crime against their godly standards had been committed. So as any noble hero would do, Oedipus sets out on a quest for this knowledge. He soon discovers that the murder of Thebe’s prior king, Laius, is the root off his city’s pollution. He vows to discover the murderer, and sets the punishment of death or banishment to whomever was found guilty. This was his intention. We can also see again that Oedipus is a noble hero, as he is a king and he is willing to go to any ends for his people. These traits would have invoked feelings of respect in the minds of the audience. As Oedipus discovers more information, he draws nearer to the conclusion that it is possible that through self-blindness and ignorance, Oedipus himself is the likely murderer of Laius. Through this step in the play we see that again Oedipus carries the qualities of a tragic hero; his murdering of Laius was due to his self-arrogance and lack of knowledge that the man who he was killing was of high status. This murder was indeed due to Oedipus’s tragic flaw of Hubris (‘arrogant disregard for the rights of others’, or â€Å"overbearing pride or presumption† 14) but he was unaware of the consequences and the murder was quite spontaneous. Oedipus continues to search for the truth despite his possible self-guilt, as he states that he must be sure that he is indeed Leuis’s murderer. This, according to human standards, Oedipus not only behaved well in this situation, but he is known to have â€Å"asserted the dignity of manhood. † Alas, more investigation does lead to his definite guilt, and also leads to what is known as an â€Å"Agagnorisis,† or a † change from ignorance to knowledge. â€Å"15 Oedipus had not been born heir to the throne of Thebes. After learning of a prophecy that he would one-day murder his father and marry his mother, he ran away from his ‘parents’ to escape this fate. He had arrived in Thebes just after the time of Laius’s death. A sphinx was afflicting the city at the time, and he defeated it, there-for winning the admiration of the Thebans and stealing the heart of newly widowed queen, Jocasta. Their marriage was nearly instant, and they lived in happiness for some years and produced a number of children. So it was at this â€Å"agagnorisis† when Oedipus learnt that he had been adopted, and that Laius had been his father, and Jocasta his mother. They had discarded him apon a hill after hearing the very same prophocy, hoping they too could escape their fate. This unraveling of the plot is called the â€Å"lusis. â€Å"16 This is where the Peripeteia is for filled. Although Oedipus had always intended to catch and punish the murderer of Leius, he in no way intended that it would be himself who was responsible. This is also ironic in the sense that twice he had unknowingly set the path for his own destruction. Another form of Greek tragedy is the decision that the tragic hero must face once he has reached his agagnorisis. 17 Oedipus had a choice, to continue to live in sin with his mother/wife and perpetuate the slow destruction of Thebes, or to uphold the little dignity he had left, finally accept his fate and finalize the promises he made to his people. Oedipus chooses to do what any hero would do, accept responsibility for his actions and punish himself as he promised to do in the beginning of the play. The knowledge of his sin against his father and mother causes him to blind himself, as he could not bear to look upon the world any longer. This fact again adds irony to the story, as when Oedipus was able to see physically, he was still blind to his past and the consequences of his actions. Through his blinding, he was self-knowing, and he had for the first time accepted his fate. He left Thebes as a blind beggar. Although in some respects Oedipus is now seen as no longer a hero, the audience would have respected his final decisions, and in some way he had corrected his moral flaw through his self-punishment. We can now question the belief of fate and pre-determination. Greek tragedy did indeed deal with the role of the gods in mortal life and to the extend that mortals controlled their actions. Oedipus was responsible for his deeds, as it was by no accident that Laius died, and Oedipus did have a tragic flaw, which led to this murder. But we can also examine the fact that a prophecy existed which laid out the steps that Oedipus would take through out his life. If it where not for Oedipus’s knowledge of this prophecy, would he have ever left his home in Corinth, would he have ever murdered Laius, and married his mother? Or we can look even further into Oedipus’s past; if Jocasta and Leius had not known of this prophecy, they would never had abandoned Oedipus, and perhaps he would never had committed the sins which it seems he was destined to commit. So again we see a cause and effect chain, knowledge leading to ignorance, ignorance in turn leading to knowledge, blindness to sight, sight to blindness. It is also argued that it was the individual’s attempt to escape their fate which was the true crime against the gods. It is at this point we can see how the Cultural Revolution, known as ‘The Greek Enlightenment’, effected these drama’s. It was from this new atmosphere of questioning and individualism in which man started to question the meaning of life beyond the restraints of ‘God rules man. ‘ And not only did Greek tragedy come to question the gods, it also questioned what it meant to be human. 18 1 The Complete Plays of Sophocles. 2 http://www. stemnet. nf. ca/~hblake/tragedy1. html 3 http://www. classics. cam. ac. uk/Faculty/tragedy. html 4 www.depthame. brooklyn. cuny. edu 5 15 Greek Plays 6 The Complete Plays of Sophocles 7 www. depthame. brooklyn. cuny. edu 8 9 www. cnr. edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics. html 10 The Complete Plays of Sophocles. 11 The Complete Plays of Sophocles 12 The Complete Plays of Sophocles 13 www. depthame. brooklyn. cuny. edu 12 American Heritage dictionary 15 www. cnr. edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics. html 16 www. cnr. edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics. html 17 http://www. stemnet. nf. ca/~hblake/tragedy1. html 18 http://www. stemnet. nf. ca/~hblake/tragedy1. html.