To Be a Great Tragedy

To be a Great Tragedy

In Greek, the word “tragedy” means “goat song” because it begins prosperously, as a goat is abundantly hairy in front, and ends wretchedly, as a goat is bare in the rear.  Tragedy first started in ancient Greek drama, and it developed as a type of literature which has a longstanding tradition heightening solemn and serious tensions in the audiences. According to the book Reading on the Tragedy by David Bender, tragedy is a serious play about the failure, sorrows, and death of a hero who wants a highly respected public position (29).  In addition, tragedies are elegant plays that are concerned with consequential actions.  Also, Bender indicates that the tragedy action is complete with a beginning, middle, and an end.  The Greek philosopher Aristotle notes the tragedy incidents have to be “casually connected” so that the events are related logically and each of them lead to the “inevitable catastrophe” and growing naturally.  In the Poetics, Aristotle described tragedy as “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete in itself, and of a certain magnitude” (30).  Aristotle also mentioned, in the catharsis, which is the feelings of fear and compassion that the audience feels when the great hero of tragedy faces defeat and difficulties.  To meet their catharsis and make tragedy tragic, the great tragedy has to accomplish three key elements: the hero’s characteristics and recognition, a major role of influential characters, and death of hero including other characters.  

The first key element for tragedy to become more tragic depends on the hero’s individual characteristics which lead to the hero’s fall and recognition.  According to Aristotle, the catastrophe is caused by a flaw in the character of the hero.  Because of their deficit in their characteristics, the tragic protagonists make mistakes, including confusing appearance with reality, misjudging other characters, and misinterpreting events (qtd. in Bender 30).  

The first hero who makes mistakes by confusing appearance with reality is Hamlet.  In Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare between 1599 and 1601, Hamlet is the crowned prince of Denmark.  Charlton says in his book, Shakespearian Tragedy, that in Hamlet, the hero Hamlet fails “not because he thinks, but because he thinks too much” (93).  It is okay to think in one sense, but the problem is he thinks too often and it does not help him to clear his mind or overcome trials that he has.  Instead of helping him get out of his situation, it leads him to the dark.  Also Charlton mentions in his book that Hamlet’s way of thinking leads him to the frustration of the object.  Therefore, his way of thinking “overreaches itself” and the function of mind constructs “an intellectual pattern of reality [that] becomes merely a capacity to build abstract patterns, and the relation of these patterns to reality is misapprehended, if not discounted entirely” (94).  His other characteristics show in the book, Shame in Shakespeare, that Hamlet has shame in his eyes—the “instinctive recognition of what is degraded or obscene” (Fernie 120).  Fernie continues that Hamlet is not a person who really concerned about others, he is only concerned “with the way that they reflect on him” (120).  Hamlet is the person who creates the significant images that represent the atmosphere and theme of the play.  Bender writes that Hamlet’s imagery shows that whenever he thinks and speaks, “he is at the same time a visionary, a seer, for whom the living things of the world about him embody and symbolize thought” (109).  His first monologue shows the short time which lies between his mother’s remarriage and his father’s death is “to him a series of picture taken form real life”:  

A little month, or ere those shoes were old

                With which she follow’d my poor father’s body        

                Like Niobe, all tears:

                Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears

                Had left the flushing in her galled eyes…. (qtd. in bender 109)

In his monologue, he seems to not translate of the general idea and thought “into an image paraphrasing it.” On the other hand, he uses the “opposite method.”  Hamlet refers the “generalization to the events and objects of the reality underlying the thought.”  The “sense of reality” expresses in all the images that Hamlet employs (110).  Hamlet’s basic characteristic, which is confusing reality according to his imaginations, helps him feign madness and causes him to be more likely to be affected by a secondary character or thing, which is the spirit of king, called the Ghost.    

        The second example of a hero is Othello, who makes mistakes by misjudging the characters Iago and Desdemona, from the book Othello written by William Shakespeare around the year 1603.  Bender writes that Othello is a hero of the ancient world who is not a man like normal person, but a man with an extraordinary recognition.  He has the heroic qualities of strength and courage and heroic capacity for passion.  He is a man of “alien race”, a stranger and a “self –made man” (140).  Bender continues that he is a great man with honor and grand and noble character but he misjudges Iago for a loving friend, an honest man, and Desdemona, who is a faithful wife, for an adulteress with Cassio (30). Othello’s misjudging of Iago causes him to fall and finally recognize the truth and regrets what he has done by the death.  Leggatt says in the book Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Violation and Identity, Othello’s nightmare makes him become more anxious to see things that he cannot see and very anxious about what others have seen which was hidden from him (127).  The characteristics that he has becomes an indirect cause which makes him to be more likely to get involved with the cheating and lying of the secondary character Iago, because he knows that seeing is believing; however, more important for him, believing is seeing.                                                                                                                                                  

        The third hero is Hedda from the book Hedda Gabbler written by Henrik Ibsen in 1890.  After this book was published, Hedda used to be called “Female Hamlet” which means that the two characters Hedda and Hamlet are similar.  In the play, Hedda seems to have a “hidden motive” in her life.  When Mrs. Elvasted asked about some “hidden motive”, she said “Yes, I have.  I want for once in my life to have power to mould a human destiny” (45).  It represents that she wants to have the power over her former lover, Eilert Lovborg, and his entire life.  It shows that her goal is very unusual from others and this “hidden motive” leads her to the great tragedy.