Anagnorisis Essay

who must evoke a sense of pity and fear in the audience” and “it is his/her downfall that evokes the feelings of pity and fear among the audience.” Some of the basic characteristics of a tragic hero are: Noble birth, Hamartia, Hubris, Peripeteia, Anagnorisis, and Catharsis. Noble birth is described as “the hero beginning the story in a position of social and/or moral power. Hamartia is described as the tragic flaw that causes the downfall of a hero.” Hubris is described as “a typical flaw in the…

Athenians uses plays and theaters to increase civic engagement and to teach their citizens how to properly act in a democracy. In Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone, the play starts when Antigone returns to Thebes and finds out that both her brothers, Eteocles and Polynices have died fighting for the throne. The next king in line is Creon and his first decree is to bury Eteocles in honor and leave Polynices unburied in the open fields to decay. Distraught between her values and the law, she risks her…

fertilizes a seed in the protagonist’s mind that results in his moral collapse and ultimately his death. This essay will be juxtaposing the moral decline of both Macbeth and Othello, the factors that contribute to their destruction, and why the anagnorisis that both reach is not adequate enough to make them sympathetic characters, meaning that the reader can relate to them. From the start, both Macbeth and Othello…

Morally ambiguous characters, characters whom readers can not identify as profoundly immoral or morally virtuous, are at the center of many artistic works of literature. In the last play of The Oedipus Cycle written play famous playwright Sophocles, the tragic play Antigone’s main character, King Creon of Thebes, is a perfect example of a tragic hero and a morally ambiguous character. Throughout the duration of the play, Creon had many good intentions for his people, he also had a heart for…

his daughter, Gonerill and Regan, progressively strip him of his power, represented by Shakespeare with the decreasing of his knights Lear begins with “his hundred knights,” Regan cuts it down to “fifty,” and then to “five and twenty” and Gonerill strips the power away further suggesting “ten? Or five?” until Regan completely tears away any power Lear had by asking him “what need one?” This digression of knights shows that if he no longer has them he will lose his control over everything, a…

Antigone the Tragic Heroine Determination. Love. Family. Loyalty. All of these words are the words that define what the main character of Sophocles’ Greek drama Antigone was about. The main character in the Greek drama Antigone was very opinionated on what she felt was right. Eteocles and Polyneices (Antigone’s brothers) killed each other in a battle because Polyneices was considered as a traitor. However, this is not just a Greek drama, it is also a tragedy. A tragedy is revealing…

In classic water imagery there is always a sense of renewal, change and livelihood, but Dubrow takes what is generally thought of as a sign of life and strangulates it into an ironic symbol of a woman’s extinction. Within the poem, the speaker discovers from the murky depths of “the bottom drawer” of their mother’s dresser a blue silk dress (2-3). They describe it as a “body dragged from the lake” (13), like a waterlogged memorial for a person still thought to be living. The water imagery Dubrow…

his work after ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle’s (384-322 B.C.) Poetics, the first book of Western literary criticism. In it, Aristotle discusses the characteristics of a tragic hero and the four elements of a tragedy: hamartia, peripety, anagnorisis, and catastrophe. In this paper, I analyze how Shakespeare implemented the Aristotelian standards of tragedy in Othello. Elaborating on the traits of a tragic hero, Aristotle writes that the necessary characteristics are: be a…

Khaos translates into chaos and means “gaping void” in Greek. It describes confusion and a lack of organization and order. Order and chaos are key points in creating tension and suspense in any form of entertainment. The Greeks are widely known for creating some of the best plots and themes involving the conflict of chaos and in their plays. Oedipus Rex written by Sophocles is a prime example of the Greeks’ fondness of chaos. The character Teiresias causes the most chaos with the least effort.…

Sofia Petros-Gouin Period 7 Gender Identities Across Literary Movements Mrs. Martling Medea and Clytemnestra Comparison Paper Due Monday October 13, 2014 Women have historically been characterized by society in accordance with their emotional reactions; Clytemnestra and Medea, of Aeschylus' Agamemnon and Euripides' Medea respectively, are no exception to this trend. Ancient Greek societal norms understood it was plain that in the face of challenges, men react with logic and reason while…