Fragmentation In Titus Andronicus

Of all Shakespearean tragedies, Titus Andronicus is bar none the bloodiest. It scores the most points for volume and creativity. Unlike the causes of casualties in other plays, (“Stabbed/ Stabbed/ Hanged/ etc”), those in Titus require a little more imagination to grasp (“Pie/ Pie/ Indigestion/ etc”). When a character dies from a typical tragic cause— poisoned or stabbed with a sword— it is understood that the fact of death alone achieves resolution; when a character dies a little more colorfully— for instance, ground and baked in a pie, and killing the mother who eats it— it should be assumed that the means of death is equally pregnant with meaning, encouraging analysis. Like the mother-sons who meet package deaths through dining experience, Titus and his daughter suffer mutilation and death in similar manner. The amputation of their hand(s) and how the play treats it until the characters meet their eventual deaths is significant to the overall meaning of the play, for the theme of metaphorical dismemberment and fragmentation in society is echoed at large in the structure of the play. Regenerative impulse
The play opens to reveal Rome in the state of political fragmentation. Headless without an emperor, Shakespeare’s Rome initially suffers from an inability to achieve unity. Titus, of all characters whose desire and impulse towards unity is the …show more content…
As soon as he senses a constituent part in discordance with the political body, he dismembers it. When aghast Lucius reproaches father, Titus shows further willingness to disown anyone from his family who disrupts unity: “Nor thou nor he any sons of mine./ My sons would never dishonor me” (1.1.300-01). This familial rift is an early demonstration in the play of Titus’ predominant logic that in order for the whole body to flourish, the parts of that body must work together, each observing its appropriate