The parable Before the Law by Frank Kafka can easily be summarized as this; If You do not try you will not sussed. The county man comes to the gates of the law but when stopped by the doorkeeper and told that he cannot enter, although he is welcome to try because the gate is wide open he is afraid of what the doorkeeper tells him so instead he waits. He waits for such a long time that he grows old and weak. "quote" ( Frank Kafka , Before the Law) He complanes loudly and then in quite grumpily about his predicament. Instead of getting up and trying to walk through the gate he sits and waits for something to change while he dose nothing to change.
The author uses a parable to reflect this idea because it teaches you something , when you know that something is a parable you know that there is something there they are trying to teach you. The law is unchanging unless you ,make it change if no actions are taken by you . Antigone sees the wrong in her uncles law and is willing to take the risk to change the law and buries her brother. The coast for this is death, but she accepts it and because of her actions the law is changed eventually.
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Antigone has suffered the lose of both parents and both brothers by the beginning of the play ; One brother Eteocles is given an honorable death whilst the other Polyneices who opposed there uncle and staked his own clam to the thrown is left to rote and be fead off of by birds and wild animals. Antigone despot by the dishonor shown to her brother Polyneices in death means to bury Polyneices and tries to convince her only living sibling and sister Isman to help her burry the body even thought there uncle the king has forbidden anyone to touch the body under penalty of death. When Iseme refuses to help under fear of the law Antigone is angry with her and leaves to burry the body herself. Holding what she sees as right and wrong high then the law made by a mortal man even if that man is a king. Thought the play Antigone is firm on heartsease and dose not sway , not only dose she attempt to burry her brothers body once but twice when she desire that her first ritual has been desecrated by the armed gardes Creon has sent to watch the body.
While Anigones actons are seen as homabel and nobel Creons actions are seen as the actions of a man that is blinded by his own ignorance and pride. Contualsy people conform Creon and ask him to change is way ,.His own son confronts him but Creon bushes him aside accusing him of being weak and under the whiles of a pretty girl. Haimon exsaperated and agree with his father tells him before he leaves "whenever a man supposes that he alone has intelligence of expression or feelinging, he exposes himself and shows his emptiness. But its no shame even for a wise man to learn and relent.” (Pg 49 line 855 Antigone) Crean is blind to others reasons and feelings can't see the justice in Antigone actions only the disrespect he feels she is causing him. Iseme to try to talked to the king it is not until after a long argument the prophet finally confines Creon to change his mind but by then it is too late Anitgong has killed herselfe And in grief and rage Haimon stabs himself before his fathers eyesand in death lays at the feet of Antigone his once bride to be. Creons human fault leads to tragedy after tragedy. Antigone is also stead fast in her beliefs but is will to pay the cosiqunces almost too willing because if she had waited she could have ran away with Haimon or been relases by Creon. The human fault within this play is stubbornness . Whether it is noble like that of Antigone or ignorant like that of Creon If you are unwilling to change it will only lead to suffering. Maybeth the point of tragedy is refeled a human fault and worn people against it “Stubbornness is stupidity. It is criminal. " (Pg 60 line 1180 down Antigone) Tragedy are lesson to be learned to avoid heart ace and ruin and to become a better person for it. And in the end there is still the happy ending to show that while we suffer we can still find reason for it a purposes that gives us : the character, the audience , mankind the ability to move on and improve. The idea that our decisions are not truly only our own can seem frightening in most lights. However it makes perfect scenes. How could we possibly make only personal decisions the are solely our own and only for us when we are surrounded by others, constantly. In school and home, online. Are thought are affected by others when we intend it and event when we don’t. Because of this it is easy for us to make mistakes or be persuaded. “We use our vision more hours of the day then anything else… and if we have these predictable repeatable mistakes in vision, which we are so good at , what are the changes we won’t make even more mistakes in something we're not that good at.” (Are we in control of our own decisions, Dan Ariely). It's a human flaw we all have one that we are all blind to. In tragedies decisions are made and actions are taken in hopes of improving things often only to make them worse. We try to fix thing for others and ourselves , how we decide to do this is often influenced by society and circumstances as well as up bringing. Oedipus wants to change his future and prevent the oracle's prophecy from coming true in his attempts to flee from the prophecy he sets it in action. If the Oracle had not told him his fortune he would have never left the kingdom of his adoptive parents , never killed his father or married his mother. His actions were persuaded by the oracle even if the thought they were his own. This also leads to the question of is it all fate? Is it destined to happen regardless. The answer in the case of tragedies is yes; because they are written pieces of works their creators have decided how they want the story to play out and how it's going to end . Every decision made every word spoken every action taken is then predestined. It's only a matter of how apparent the writer makes the destiny appear. With the Greeks there are oracles that tell not only the main character but the audiences exactly what will happen after this point it is really only a matter or what the main character will do to avoid it how far will they go to run away from the inevitable end. In their lies the real reason for reading the tragedy you want to see how strong a characters is how much they're willing to fight for what they want, who they're willing to destroy in order to protect another. It's not the ending that matters so much as how they get their. This reading provides a rather opposing look at tragedies in most sources we have looked at they focus on the suffering and misfortunes that are in tragedies. What kinds of misfortunes are there , who causes them, etc However in Joseph Krutch’s Reading Tree from “ The Tragic Fallacy” we are presented with a more positive look at tragedies. The beginning of the piece he refers to Aristodels idea or tragedy wich is the “imitation of noble actions” saying that a tragedy is neither an imitation nor always noble.
He goes on to try and express how tragedies are not all the same and do not necessarily follow the same rubric or pattern. He also dispels the idea that a tragedy is a made up of noble actions “Tragedy is not, then as Aristotle said , the imitation of noble actions, for, indeed, 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.” ( Joseph Krutch, Reading Three) How can a tragedy be made of noble actions when within a tragedy there are heroes like Achilles who drags Hector around the city walls of Troy on the back of a chariot in front of all of Hector’s family and subjects bringing Andromache to his knees begging to have his son's body back for a proper burial. That is not a noble action and yet the work is still considered a tragedy. People know the world is at best imperfect. We are aware of the loss and suffering that are a part of this world . The point of a tragedy is to show are accepted of this fact but also to show our faith in mankind and our ability to struggle and strive for better. “ ...people fully aware of the calamities of life is nevertheless serenely confident of the greatness of man “ ( Joseph Krutch, Reading Three) . A man shows his greatest features when put in the worst circumstances . To fight for something more something better,to struggle and fall and still have the desire to raise back up. It's not meant to focus on the turmoil and suffering but instead on the “triumph over despair and of confidence in the value of human life” Krutch also has the idea that all stories “worth their weight have happy endings” I do not think he means the Disney fairytale happy ending buy instead that the works end in they way the audiences wants them to. The audience is satisfied with the ending. If Shakespeare had ended Romeo and Juliet with an ‘ and they live happily ever after’ or even just with Romeo living in exile and Juliet despising him for killing her cousin, marrying Paris ;we would not be nearly as attached to the story. The ending that Shakespeare gives us with the death of the two young lovers shows a passionate capacity for love no matter what the causes, it also causes the two families to finally set aside their rivalry and see that there hate gave them only grief. “ we accept gladly the outward defeats which it describes for the sake of the inward victories which it revealed. Juliet died, but not before she had shown how great and resplendent a thing love could be” ( Joseph Krutch, Reading Three). Without the loss of the “ star-crossed lovers,” we wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing this play out it would feel unfinished and unsatisfying. In current times we judge ourselves more personal for our success and failures were in the past the case was often felt to be mostly controlled by circumstance and happen chances. The tragedy is the measurement of success and failure. The failure of a person to recognize a flaw in their character, the failure of a government to is people. Tragedy though wrote for the common are not often written about them. Their reason for this is the fact that the purpose of tragedy is to create a feeling of catharsis but not envy. How could you not be envious then of characters written as kings , queens and wealthy well to do members of society that so often are depicted in the works then? The fact is that these characters are too strange to different from the audience. You can't envy something you can't relate to "When you can't relate to someone you don't envy them."( Alain de Botton, A Kinder Gentler philosophy of susses) In today's society, we are made to believe that we all are able to achieve great things. We have " The spirit of equality combined with deep inequality".( Alain de Botton, A Kinder Gentler philosophy of susses) Because of this, we are made to feel as if we should all be capable of achieving great things. the senses of equality that we presented with leads us to be more envious. We see are selfs as comparable and therefore are more prone to envy than any other feeling. So with the greater difficulty in creating a plot that consent invoke catharsis and the Newer more popular ways of pointing out injustices : such as satire. the popularity of Tragedies has decreased. With the idea of failure and susses being a personal fault we do not recognize others failure , tragedies without seeing our own. Therefore instead of that feeling of " glad, that could never happen to me." We instead compare and invoke a different type of self-thought such as that of envy. The tragedy of the common man is a tragedy by circumstance whereas classical tragedy is self-inflicted by one's self. The reason for writing a tragedy is to display an injustice that is occurring."Tragedy enlightens- and it must,in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy, of man's freedom." (Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man, line 28,27) Bases on the time period , location, and society a tragedy piece is written in and who it's written for reveals an underlining issue within the society or government.
Tragedies are often written and displayed for the common people. The reason being that the common person is able to relate to tragedy because they have had the most experience with hardship. This concept is most relatable to the Elizabethan era with play writers like Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. They wrote mostly for the public .Although their writers also wrote works in a variety of styles the tragedy pieces are the ones that are most popularly remembered. Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet are read in schools across the county , both of wich are tragedies; probably the most popularly known works of tragedy in the United States. These are seen to present most popularly with the common people because they reflect a truth of unjust that was seen in the society or Shakespeare viewers . Although the unjust of today's society is likely different than that of 16 century England the pieces are written in a way that allows the underlying issues to be interpreted differently and still are relatable to people today. It's said that if you are feeling down and you want to see a movie you should not go see the feel good movie but the sad sappy one where everything goes wrong. The reason being that people cannot help but compare their life and situation to others. If you were to see the 'feel good' film you would compare all the negative things in your life to all of the good things in the life of the characters. However if you go to the ore depressing film you are more likely to come out and think "Well at least my situation is not as bad as that one."
Tragedy is meant to make the viewer feel pity and fear for the character of which the event is happening too. The overall goal of a tragedy is catharsis—"the purification or purgation of the emotions aroused in a tragic performance."( Tragedy, Wikipedia). What defines a piece as tragedy is mostly depending on the audience's opinion . if the audience dose not feel a senses of pity, fear or catharsis them then it might have been meant to be a tragedy but it is not. The tragedy is more heart wrenching because the person puts themselves' in the circumstances that lead to the tragedy when they could have prevented it but chooses not to or is unable to see their own flaws that led to the tragedy. "if a character’s downfall is brought about by an external cause, Aristotle describes this as a misadventure and not a tragedy. " ( Tragedy, Wikipedia) In Revenge tragedy the started to become popular in the Elizabethan era the characters would lead to there own demise in the seek of revenge and self justice.Writers of this time were using tragedy ,which the common people who experience much hardship enjoyed, to display how the government was not providing the common people juries. The Elizabethan houses incorporated ideas from the roman version of tragedy into their writing. "Revenge tragedy stems from”Roman Tragedies, in particular, Seneca's Thyestes.[3] Seneca's tragedies followed three main themes: the inconsistency of fortune (Troades), stories of crime and the evils of murder (Thyestes), and plays in which poverty, chastity and simplicity are celebrated (Hippolytus).[3]” |
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