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Comparative analysis essay
Essay on the elements of tragedy
Comparative analysis essay
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Thesis: Tragedy was a source of entertainment back from the Ancient Greece that was written to tell a story and to pull audiences into feeling remorse and pity. It was also used to help the audience gain an appropriate response about the protagonist. Hamlet, Agamemnon, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is comparable pieces of literature that shares a similar element of Hamartia. Main points: With a common element of Hamartia that is being shares among the three pieces of literature, comes the similarities and the differences. The similarities that audiences can see throughout the text are that the entire protagonist from each of the text faced consequences at the end. Another similarity that is common among this text is that they were all manipulated by someone around them. The differences of these texts are the personality of the protagonist. Evidence: Hamlet – “Heaven make thee free of it. I follow thee.— I am dead, Horatio.—Wretched queen, adieu!— You that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act, Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death, Is strict in his arrest), O, I could tell you— But let it …show more content…
Alfred Prufrock”, one should not forget that there are differences too. Evidence: Hamlet: “How strange or odd some 'er I bear myself (As I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on)” Agamemnon: “loud and ringing cry was of war, from anger, like vultures which in extreme anguish for their young wheel and spiral high above their nests […]. On high, someone – either Apollo or Pan or Zeus – hears the birds ' wailed lament, the sharp cry of these settlers in their home, and for the transgressors ' later punishment sends a Fury. In just this way the mighty Zeus who guards hospitality sends Atreus ' sons against Alexandros, because of a woman with many
...ods come for the free drugs that he offers. Johnny is a man for whom we feel pride, shame and pity all at once but such a contradictory character would be unstable and unpredictable. Aristotle defines tragedy according to seven characteristics. These are that it is characterized by mimicry, it is serious, it expresses a full story of a relevant length, it contains rhythm and harmony, the rhythm and harmony occur in different combinations in different parts of the tragedy, it is performed not narrated and that it provokes feelings of pity and fear then purges these feelings through catharsis the purging of the emotions and emotional tensions. The composition of a tragedy consists of six segments. In order of relevance, these are plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and performance. For a comedy the ending must be merry. Instead Jerusalem ends in death.
The difference in Agamemnon’s and Odysseus’s approach of their homeland is a reason for their differing fates. Agamemnon, the king of Argos, returns from Troy after a safe journey. Once he lands on the shores of his native earth, his false sense of security renders him unsuspecting of the possible danger that lurks in his own home. His naiveté leads him to approach his home directly to show his people that he has returned. Since his subjects were no longer loyal to him, his exposure leads to his demise. Their disloyalty is revealed when Aegisthus, the man who plots to kill Agamemnon, gathers the town’s best soldiers to ambush the king. Agamemnon meets Aegisthus, who organized a banquet where the king and his company are mercilessly slaughtered. Because he fails to assess the danger that exists in his homeland, Agamemnon meets his end soon after his return.
] Like Hamlet, Horatio believes that death is a happiness, and even tries to take his own life. Yet he accepts his duty “in this harsh worldly success as well as against disappointment. [. . .] Horatio may beg his friend to postpone the fencing match if his mind misgives, because Horatio, unlike Hamlet, never achieves the full sense of exultation in anticipating unknown events; yet Horatio knows finally that Hamlet was right....
The tradition of the tragedy, the renowned form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis, has principally become a discontinued art. Plays that evoke the sense of tragedy-the creations of Sophocles, Euripides, and William Shakespeare-have not been recreated often, nor recently due to its complex nature. The complexity of the tragedy is due to the plot being the soul of the play, while the character is only secondary. While the soul of the play is the plot, according to Aristotle, the tragic hero is still immensely important because of the need to have a medium of suffering, who tries to reverse his situation once he discovers an important fact, and the sudden downturn in the hero’s fortunes. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is the modern tragedy of a common man named Willy Loman, who, like Oedipus from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, exhibits some qualities of a tragic hero. However, the character Willy Loman should not be considered a full-on tragic hero because, he although bears a comparable tragic flaw in his willingness to sacrifice everything to maintain his own personal dignity, he is unlike a true tragic hero, like Oedipus, because he was in full control of his fate where Oedipus was not.
Displaying an 'antic disposition', Hamlet first attempts to side step his trepidation by feigning madness. After meeting with his fathers proposed ghost, Hamlet attempts to distance himself from the thought or evidence of death. Hamlet notifies his friends, Marcellus and Horatio, of his plan to distract the kingdom from his real intentions. Although Hamlet proposes this as a way to fool those in Denmark, in the last lines of his meeting with Horatio and Marcellus, he curses that this revenge be placed upon him. This is the first indication of Hamlets reluctance to perform murder. Hamlet then returns to Claudius and Gertrude, at the castle, and acts out his madness for them and for the visitor, Polonius. Upon speaking to Polonius, Polonius picks up upon Hamlets 'madness', yet decides that this unnatural nature is because if Ophelia's behavior toward Hamlet. Indication of Hamlets fear is presented when Polonius asks leave of the prince. Hamlet then states that Polonius can take anything from him, anything but his life. Hamlet repeats thrice this idea of taking anything 'except [his] life.' Not only does this indicate how compulsive Hamlets fake insanity is becoming, but how afraid he is of dying. During the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, Hamlet contemplates his view of death. As he go...
...y sirens represent half-women, half-bird creatures who lived on an island. They used to sing in beautiful voices to lure sailors off their course. When Odysseus was sailing by the siren's island, he made the rest of his men plug up their ears and ties him to the mainmast. This way, he got to hear the beautiful sound of their voice without being driven to suicide. In this story the women weeping over Lautaro were compared to the sirens, and some sailors going to tie themselves to the mainmast in an attempt to mimic Odysseus. There is a contrast of these stories with the quotes from the villagers.
The Chorus informs the audience of the battle that occurred in the previous scene. The army of Polynices swarmed on the city, but Polynices was forced to flee before he could damage the city. The day before, the Argive Army attacked Thebes and was driven back. Choragos, the Chorus's leader, explains that "the wild eagle screaming," Polyneices, led the attack on his own home, but Thebes answered the battle cry. Choragos explains that God supported the Theban warriors since “God hates utterly the bray of bragging tongues”, or in other words, arrogant and prideful warriors such as Polyneices and the Argive army. Choragos and the Chorus share that two brothers, Polyneices and Eteocles, killed each other. Then the Chorus celebrates this ultimate Theban victory. Now, says the Chorus, is the time to celebrate, “to fill the temples, with glad thanksgiving for warfare ended”.
McManus, Barbera F. “Outline of Aristotle's Theory of Tragedy in the Poetics.” Nov. 1999. Web. 4 Nov. 2011. .
Myers, H. A. (1949). Aristotle's study of tragedy. Educational Theatre Journal, 1(2), 115. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1290192594?accountid=12085
Renowned literary critic, Peter Wenzel, firmly states, “the ‘antic- disposition’ (I.5.180) affected by the protagonist has often been taken as another instance of real madness in the play. There is however, important historical and contextual evidence to be adduced against this view”. Wenzel creates an argument against popular belief. He argues that although Hamlet appears to be “crazy”, the reality is that he is sane, purposefully faking madness. He goes on to say that there is specific evidence from within the text that shows he is feigning madness to further his plot of revenge. Two nightly guards, Horatio and Marcellus, see an unusual sight, the ghost of deceased King Hamlet. They advise Hamlet of this, and he visits the ghost. When Hamlet returns from his visit with the ghost, he is astonished by the newly- found cause of his father’s death. He decides that he must avenge his father’s death by killing Claudius. To avenge his father’s death, Hamlet puts on “antic- disposition”, in which he feigns madness. Upon his return to the guards, Horatio and Marcellus, he exclaims, “How strange or odd some’er I bear myself/ As I perchance hereafter shall think meet/ To put antic disposition on”( ). Hamlet reveals to the guards that when they see him, he may seem deranged, but that it is an act that
The insistence of personal gain seems to shield the Homeric hero to the consequences that can befall not only him, but also those that are under his leadership. Agamemnon ignores the evidence that the girls father is a priest of the god Apollo, by dis...
In Arthur Miller’s essay, Tragedy and the Common Man, Miller creates a distinction from classical tragedies by creating a modern tragedy. Aristotle’s classic tragedy is, “an imitation of an action that is serious and complete in the mode of action and is not narrated. It effects pity and fear which is called catharsis. It has a beginning, middle, and end and its function is to tell of such things that might happen in the future- to express the universal” (Aristotle). To produce the feelings of either pity or fear, reversal, which is, “the change from one state of affairs to its exact opposite” (Aristotle), and recognition, which is, “the change from ignorance to knowledge, on the part of those who are marked for good fortune or bad” (Aristotle) must both ...
...n Aristotle’s view of characters. Aristotle also suggests that a tragedy should have the power to provoke audience’s emotion of pity and fear. The suffering and behavior of each character in Hamlet possess that power. The author agrees with the Aristotelian analysis of Hamlet, the story of Hamlet was perfectly based on Aristotle’s tragedy theory. However, the author thinks that the tragedy doesn’t always have to end up in misery. A tragic story can also have some hidden happiness in the suffering, misery of tragic hero(s), in which way can audience realize that there is still hopeful when your life is tragic and encourage people to strive hard to create a better life.
Rahman, Rubina, and Sameera Abbas. "Antic Disposition: Hamlet in the Light of Cooperative Principle." The Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 21.1 (2013): 51-60. ProQuest. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
The next tragedy to take place is when Agamemnon and his men completely overlook all the warnings given by the chorus and Cassandra about the unrest in his house. The leader of the chorus...