Most can agree that random evil and suffering, such as accidents, war, illness, crime, and many more, have the power to disrupt human happiness. Most would also agree that it is not the evil and suffering that affects one, as much as it is how one responds to the evil and suffering that occurs in one’s life. It is undeniable that suffering occurs to everyone in some shape or form, and while others may not believe that it is suffering, it all depends on one’s life. There are many examples a reader can draw from in recent and ancient literature that provides examples of other’s suffering and how they responded to those stimuli. This essay explores how the problem of evil is addressed by Greek tragedy and by Western monotheistic tradition.
Greek
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tragedies reached its most significant form in Greek society in the 5th century B.C. Many of the famous Greek tragedy playwrights include Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Euripides is most known for The Bacchae, Sophocles is most known for Antigone, and Homer, while not one of the most famous playwrights, wrote the two tragedies credited for shaping Greek perception of honor, and is credited with writing The Iliad. Thucydides wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War, and while it is not a Greek tragedy in a fictional sense, Thucydides accounts for real-life suffering of the Greek people during an abhorrent period in their history. Euripides’ The Bacchae is a difficult piece of literature to fathom.
The suffering begins on Pentheus’ part, when Dionysus enter the city. Pentheus’ citizens cease listening to him and begin behaving as those who are deranged and weren’t raised correctly. His suffering continues as all of the women leave the city and their minds deteriorate, all the while praising the name of Dionysus. When Pentheus discovers his mother has joined them, he suffers a great deal more, as he realizes he needs to act upon this disobedience. This is when Pentheus’ suffering ends and his mother’s, Agave, begins. Agave comes out of her trance to realize that Dionysus caused her to kill her son and spit his head on a stake as she come back into the city triumphantly. After this realization, Dionysus returns to give the mortals their punishment for his mistreatment. He declares to Cadmus that “First, your future will be suffering. Then your future will be suffering again. Banishment and slavery and pain. You will be driven from this city. You will be hounded into other land. Captives in a war. Chains. Slavery. Toil. Your lives will wear away like sand” (Euripides, pg. 83). He then declares to Agave, “You must expiate your crime. You are polluted, you cannot stay in the precincts of these graves” (Euripides, pg. 83-84). Dionysus continues again to
Cadmus, And Cadmus: there are ordeals for you. You will be transfigured into a snake. And Harmonia, the daughter of Ares, whom you won as a wife despite you being mortal, she too, will be a beast, a snake. Then both of you, drawn by oxen in a cart, will, according to the oracle of Zeus, lead an innumerable barbarian horde to lay waste cities, to ravage and destroy. And when the shrine of Apollo is sacked, the hordes will turn, and the turning, and the coming back, will be tragic. Ares, in the end, will save you and save Harmonia and bring your lives into the country of the blessed (Euripides, pg. 84). Dionysus promises to destroy the lives of Cadmus and his family because of the wrong they have done unto him. Euripides does not continue the tragedy, to explain to readers how Cadmus and his family dealt with their suffering, but one can assume that life continued, no matter how difficult it became. Sophocles’ Antigone demonstrates to a greater extent the pain and suffering family can cause. While The Bacchae had familial ties incorporated into the content of the text, Antigone is established on the idea of family. Although Antigone didn’t know her brothers well, when Creon used Polynices as a scapegoat in the fiasco and banned anyone from giving him a proper burial, she disobeyed the order and gave him a burial. She felt this was her duty, as his sister and one of his only family members that remained alive. Due to her duty to her family, she hangs herself due to her crime making her an enemy to the state. Antigone shows readers that one route to handling suffering is to not handle it at all, but rather commit suicide. However, her suicide didn’t just end her suffering, it began Haemon’s, causing him to kill himself. Upon hearing of her son’s suicide, Eurydice, commits suicide as well. Creon is now left alone and must accept all of the death around him at the end of the tragedy. Homer’s Iliad recounts the epic tale of Achilles and the Trojan War. While one may not have originally considered the suffering that occurs in the tale, it is high time to notice. In the tale of the Iliad, one finds Achilles, the most powerful warrior in the Iliad, upset with Agamemnon because Agamemnon took Briseis, Achilles’ prize. Due to this argument, Achilles’ refuses to participate in battle in order to punish Agamemnon. After many men die in battle Achilles’ best friend, and possible lover, Patroclus, convinces Achilles to let him impersonate Achilles in battle and allow it to help rally the men. Achilles goes along with it and Hector, his enemy, thinks Patroclus is Achilles and kills Patroclus. Achilles is so distraught by this news that he fights and kills Hector, and then pulls his body, attached to his chariot, around the walls of Troy for everyone inside to see that their last hope has been killed. Achilles, in his emotional state, also refuses to give Hector’s body back to his family, causing the family to suffer, and Hermes escorts Hector’s father, King Priam, to the camp to convince Achilles’ to return Hector’s body. As many know, war is a difficult time for all involved, but due to arguments between the same forces, it can make a war even worse, and the Iliad shows that. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War recounts a period in Athens’ history, a period that was one of the worst in their history. During this period, Athens went to war with Sparta, eventually lost, and also lost many citizens in the process, due to the war and the pandemic that spread while the majority of the citizens lived within the city walls. This selection includes many sources of reference for the topic of suffering. Thucydides begins by mentioning Tales told about earlier times, but scantily confirmed in actuality, suddenly ceased to be incredible: tales of earthquakes, which occurred over most of the earth at this time, quite violent ones – eclipses of the sun, which were more frequent than is recorded in earlier times – great droughts in some places followed by famine – and, what caused enormous harm and loss of life, the plague (pg. 36). During this time period there was also great suffering due to the men leaving for battle; Athens had the best navy in the world at that time and with all of the eligible men gone, there were none to continue living in the city, forming families and promoting commerce. The other cause of suffering was the plague and the death toll it left in its wake. “If anyone was sick before, his disease turned into this one. If not, they were taken suddenly, without any apparent cause, and while they were in perfect health” (pg. 43). This not only caused suffering to those who lost family members and loved ones, but also hurt the people’s morale, “Such was the misery that weighed on the Athenians. It was very oppressive, with men dying inside the city and the land outside being wasted” (pg. 44). Most can agree that random evil and suffering, such as accidents, war, illness, crime, and many more, have the power to disrupt human happiness. Most would also agree that it is not the evil and suffering that affects one, as much as it is how one responds to the evil and suffering that occurs in one’s life. It is undeniable that suffering occurs to everyone in some shape or form, and while others may not believe that it is suffering, it all depends on one’s life, circumstance, and perception. There are many examples a reader can draw from in recent and ancient literature that provides examples of other’s suffering and how they responded to those stimuli. This essay explored how the problem of evil is addressed by Greek tragedy and by Western monotheistic tradition, and now one may consider other literature and how it applies to suffering and the resulting human happiness.
A twenty-first century reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey will highlight a seeming lack of justice: hundreds of men die because of an adulteress, the most honorable characters are killed, the cowards survive, and everyone eventually goes to hell. Due to the difference in the time period, culture, prominent religions and values, the modern idea of justice is much different than that of Greece around 750 B.C. The idea of justice in Virgil’s the Aeneid is easier for us to recognize. As in our own culture, “justice” in the epic is based on a system of punishment for wrongs and rewards for honorable acts. Time and time again, Virgil provides his readers with examples of justice in the lives of his characters. Interestingly, the meaning of justice in the Aeneid transforms when applied to Fate and the actions of the gods. Unlike our modern (American) idea of blind, immutable Justice, the meanings and effects of justice shift, depending on whether its subject is mortal or immortal.
Euripdies' The Bacchae is known for its celebration of women's rebellion and patriarchial overthrow, claims which hold truth if not supremely. The Thebans, along with other women, pursue the rituals and culture of Dionysus’s cult which enacts their rebellion against men and the laws of their community. However, this motion to go aginst feminine norms is short lived as they lose power. When Agave comes to her epiphany, Dionysus is the one who is triumphant over Pentheus's death, not Agave or her sisters These women must be punished for their rebellion against both men and community. This female power is weakened and the rebellion muted in order to bring back social order and also to provide the story with a close. Female rebellion actually becomes oppressed through The Bacchae due to its conseqences and leading events of the play. This alludes to the message that women who do not follow traditional roles of femininity are subject to the destruction of an established society.
The question of why bad things happen to good people has perplexed and angered humans throughout history. The most common remedy to ease the confusion is to discover the inflicter of the undeserved suffering and direct the anger at them: the horror felt about the Holocaust can be re-directed in the short term by transforming Adolf Hitler into Lucifer and vilifying him, and, in the long term, can be used as a healing device when it is turned into education to assure that such an atrocity is never repeated. What, however, can be done with the distasteful emotions felt about the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Surely the citizens of those two cities did not themselves directly provoke the government of the United States to deserve the horror of a nuclear attack. Can it be doubted that their sufferings were undeserved and should cause deep sorrow, regret, and anger? Yet for the citizens of the United States to confront these emotions they must also confront the failings of their own government. A similar problem is found in two works of literature, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the book of Job found in the Tanakh. In each of these works a good man is seen to be suffering at the hand of his god; Prometheus is chained to a rock by Zeus who then sends an eagle to daily eat Prometheus' liver while Job is made destitute and brought to endure physical pain through an agreement between God~ and Satan. To examine the travails of these two men is to discover two vastly different concepts of the relationship between god and man.
Through books one to three in Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes between pain and happiness, clarifying the endless war that men face in the path of these two extremes. Man’s quest for pleasure is considered by the self-conscious and rational Aristotle; a viewpoint traditionally refuted in contemporary, secular environments.
Both Shakespeare’s King Lear and Dante’s Inferno explore the reasons for, and results of, human suffering. Each work postulates that human suffering comes as a result of choices that are made: A statement that is not only applicable to the characters in each of the works, but also to the readers. The Inferno and King Lear speak universal truths about the human condition: that suffering is inevitable and unavoidable. While both King Lear and the Inferno concentrate on admonitions and lamentations of human suffering, one of the key differences between the works is that Inferno conveys an aspect of hope that is not nearly as prevalent in King Lear.
It is easy to place the blame on fate or God when one is encumbered by suffering. It is much harder to find meaning in that pain, and harvest it into motivation to move forward and grow from the grief. It is imperative for one to understand one’s suffering as a gateway to new wisdom and development; for without suffering, people cannot find true value in happiness nor can they find actual meaning to their lives. In both Antigone and The Holy Bible there are a plethora of instances that give light to the quintessential role suffering plays in defining life across cultures. The Holy Bible and Sophocles’ Antigone both mirror the dichotomous reality in which society is situated, underlining the necessity of both joy and suffering in the world.
Although the punishment may seem rather harsh, the audience is appeased by Pentheus' death. Pentheus is incapable of making any sensible decisions. His arrogance and controlling nature is apparent in every action and choice he makes. Pentheus rejects so many hints and opportunities to realize Dionysus' real identity. In his refusal to pick up the signals, he accepts his fate: death by the hands of his own mother. It is almost as if his death, through his refusal to act sensibly, is a form of suicide.
Of the many themes and philosophies that Camus struggled with during his life and presented to the world through his writings, one of the more prevalent was that of the absurd. According to Camus, the world, human existence, and a God are all absurd phenomenons, devoid of any redeeming meaning or purpose. Through Mersaults’ epiphany in The Stranger, where he opens himself to the “gentle indifference of the world”, we see how Camus understands the world to be a place of nothingness, which demands and desires nothing from humans. He further explores this philosophy in The Plague, where the world of indifference is understood as a world of fear, which takes a symbolically tangible form in the plague itself. In The Plague the citizens of Oran fear that which they cannot control, understand or fight. They are faced with the most fundamental experiences of life and death, and it is only in the end that a very few find a way to cope with and understand these two ultimatums.
Kreon, with his enlightening realization and uncontrollable mishaps, possesses qualities that better represent a tragic figure. He also corresponds to more aspects of Aristotle’s tragic hero model than Antigone does: Kreon is of noble beginnings, is fated by the gods to suffering, faces misfortune from an error judgment or personality flaw, is pitied by the audience, is enlightened or changed, and becomes a vessel for the audience’s catharsis. In the end, tragedies are essentially plays in honor of Dionysus. Through Kreon’s experiences in the play, the audience is reminded of their place in relation to the gods. Just as with every other aspect of Greek culture, religion plays a fundamental role in dictating the Greeks’ interpretation and
Such when Camus writes, “All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him.”, but also contends that “Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols.” Within these quotes, I find a distinction between the acceptance of fate and the acquisition of circumstance which in both cases of Sisyphus and the absurd man, contends a claim of conflict between what we want from the universe, whether this is meaning, order, or reasons, and what we find in the universe which tends to be the uncertainty that is distinguished by
One of the most compelling topics The Iliad raises is that of the intricate affiliations between fate, man and the gods. Many events related by Homer in his epic poem exhibit how these three connections interweave and eventually determine the very lives of the men and women involved in the war. Homer leaves these complex relationships slightly unclear throughout the epic, never spelling out the exact bonds connecting men's fate to the gods and what can be considered the power of fate. The motivation for the ambiguousness present in The Iliad is not easily understood, but it is a question that enriches and helps weave an even greater significance of the results into Homer's masterpiece. I feel that the interaction between man, god, and fate can be shown to be one great fluidity that ultimately leaves life mysterious, giving much more depth and complexity to the bonds between the three.
An interesting and important aspect of this Greek notion of fate is the utter helplessness of the human players. No matter the choice made by the people involved in this tragedy, the gods have determined it and it is going to come to pass. T...
Tragic events can happen as a result of accidents, misunderstandings, or specific situations, hence, they relate little to others. However, tragedy is rooted in the order of our universe because it reveals hypothetical situations that can occur at any time or place. This feeling of uncertainty arouses feelings of pity and fear because we can imagine ourselves having to face tragedy. In Aristotle's Poetics, Aristotle defines tragedy as, “a representation of an action of serious stature and complete, having magnitude, in language made pleasing in distinct forms in its separate parts, imitating people acting and not using narration, accomplishing by means of pity and fear the cleansing of these states of feeling” (Aristotle, 26). A dramatic composition that captures the true essence of suffering and awakens our senses is one that Aristotle would call a tragedy worthy of our praise. He notes, “It is clear first that decent men ought not to be shown changing from good to bad fortune (since this is neither frightening nor pitiable but repellent) and people of bad character ought not to be shown changing from bad to good fortune (since this is the most untragic thing of all, for it has none of the things a tragedy needs, since it neither arouses love for humanity nor is it pitiable or frightening)” (Aristotle, 36).
We react to Sisyphus's fate with horror because we see its futility and hopelessness. Of course, the central argument of this essay is that life itself is a futile struggle devoid of hope. However, Camus also suggests that this fate is only horrible if we continue to hope, if we think that there is something more that is worth aiming for. Our fate only seems horrible when we place it in contrast with something that would seem preferable. If we accept that there is no preferable alternative, then we can accept our fate without horror. Only then, Camus suggests, can we fully appreciate life, because we are accepting it without reservations. Therefore, Sisyphus is above his fate precisely because he has accepted it. His punishment is only horrible if he can hope or dream for something better. If he does not hope, the gods have nothing to punish him with.
“Gods can be evil sometimes.” In the play “Oedipus the King”, Sophocles defamed the gods’ reputation, and lowered their status by making them look harmful and evil. It is known that all gods should be perfect and infallible, and should represent justice and equity, but with Oedipus, the gods decided to destroy him and his family for no reason. It might be hard to believe that gods can have humanistic traits, but in fact they do. The gods, especially Apollo, are considered evil by the reader because they destroyed an innocent man’s life and his family. They destroyed Oedipus by controlling his fate, granting people the power of prophecy, telling Oedipus about his fate through the oracle of Apollo, and finally afflicting the people of Thebes with a dreadful plague. Fundamentally, by utilizing fate, prophecies, the oracle of Apollo, and the plague, the gods played a significant role in the destruction of Oedipus and his family.