A Terrible Tragedy

In the play Antigone by Sophocles the protagonist, Creon, discovers that Antigone is going against his word and attempts to follow the Laws of the Gods. Told in third person point-of-view, the author supports his theme by describing the setting of a strict ruling city, establishing the central conflict of Antigone disobeying the Laws of Man. This affects the work as a whole because the author’s purpose is to portray Creon as a tragic hero in order to advise the audience the transformation Creon…

Like many of the works of literature that have been published so far, Shakespeare’s plays and poems have references to real-life monarchs, events in his life, works of art, or to classical and Greek mythologies. One example is The Third Part of Henry the Sixth, a history play that depicts the horrors left by the Wars of the Roses and the moral chaos in which England succumbed after the conflict. In Act 3, Scene 3, the character of Gloucester mentions the powers of a mermaid and basilisk, which…

Greek Theater Greek drama is said to have its roots from Athenian seasonal festivals honoring Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility. These festivals occurred around 700 B.C.; they were filled with drunkenness and sexuality. Scholars believe there were four festivals during each of the seasonal change periods. The festival related to the Greek people planting, tending the vine, harvesting, and wine-making was in early December. This was called the Festival of Vintage. There was a…

A tragic hero is the main protagonist, a character with the potential to have heroic qualities. The tragic hero has a future of facing some sort of supernatural force or is fated by “the gods” to have a great suffering downfall or potentially a death. The tragic hero will potentially have a “tragic downfall”. The tragic downfall is what creates a relation and interest with the reader and this character. The story is usually set up for a great goal to be accomplished and the character that…

Chris Monroe Mr. Everett English 2322 April 29, 2016 The Truth in Othello The tragic play Othello by William Shakespeare is a play that induces many emotions in the audience for various characters on numerous occasions. One of the greatest philosophers in mankind, Aristotle, states in his book Poetics that “poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history…” (Poetics Part IX). Between poetic literature and historical accounts, poetic literature is much easier to…

While a powerful tragic piece departs its reader with a sense of relief, it first derails the reader 's emotions into a frenzy of fear, pity, and sorrow. In Sophocles’ tragic play, Oedipus the King, Oedipus must save Thebes from the dreadful fortune cursed upon them. What Oedipus fails to realize is that he caused the plague through his fulfilled prophecy: to exchange rings with his mother and to terminate his father’s life. Over the course of the play, Oedipus slowly unravels his origins. His…

Of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays, many of them fall into the genre of tragedy, including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet. This latter in particular could be classified as a revenge tragedy due to its subject matter. Some elements of tragedy include complex, character-driven plots, noble, yet flawed, main characters, and highly embellished language. Hamlet contains these elements, respectively, in Hamlet’s convoluted attempts to avenge his father, his paradoxical good and bad traits, and…

The Tragic Destiny of Oedipus Oedipus the king by Sophocles is a distressing play filled with transgression, grief, and tragedies. The unfortunate incidents that the tragic hero, Oedipus, goes through invoke catharsis in the readers. He has been prophesied a dreadful fortune and feels as though “...no one suffers more than [him]” (Sophocles 27).Foretold destiny cannot be derailed as fate will always interfere and insure that the prophecy is fulfilled. Moreover, every tragic hero has a tragic…

The tragic hero is one of the most commonly misused terms in literature. Although difficult to find a character fitting of these qualities, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is deserving of the tragic hero status. In accordance to Aristotle’s poetics, Macbeth is not all good and not all bad, he undergoes proper anagnorisis, as well as proper peripeteia, making him a tragic hero. To be a tragic hero, Aristotle writes in Poetics that the hero must be not all good and not all bad. Scholars who argue Macbeth…

For my final paper, I will be answering the questions posed by Socrates’ critique of poetry and most interestingly, Socrates’ statement that poetry would have to make a better argument for itself if it is to be allowed into the just city. I will be agreeing with the claim Socrates makes regarding poetry’s inclusion into the city and I will attempt to draw the conclusion that Socrates would support that poets are like painters. Painters and poets appeal to a part of our souls that is not…