...The film A History of Violence is a movie that centralizes around the life of a man named Tom Stall, a man played by actor Viggo Mortensen, who appears to be an easygoing loving family man and a friendly local business owner in the small amiable town of Millbrook, Indiana. Stall becomes a local hero when he surprisingly kills two sociopaths that attempt to rob his diner. His life seems to immediately turn upside down when a mysterious group of mobsters begin to start following Tom and his wife Edie, accusing him of being a former hit man from Philadelphia with the name Joey Cusack. The name Stall is a very symbolic name in that Tom Stall is stalling the truth about his identity from all of those around him, including his immediate family. He is stalling from this very large secret he keeps inside of him from getting out. Violence is prevalent throughout the film. This movie raises many questions about violence and the idea of catharsis. During the film, the main character emotionally cleanses his past demons by changing his former identity to a new man of different morals. In real life, there is a lot of controversy about whether anger, rage, and fighting is a healthy form of catharsis. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines the word catharsis as “a purifying or figurative cleansing of the emotions, especially pity and fear, described by Aristotle as an effect of tragic drama on its audience.” ...
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...The Hero Without A Face Our world has given us a thousand forms of archetypical heros, from Greek mythological characters such as Hercules, to modern day characters such as Superman. All of these heros were given a path that they must follow in order to discover their ultimate destiny and become a hero. Joseph Campbell book, “A Hero With A Thousand Faces” has best explained the important stages that every hero needs to go by in order for fulfill their destiny, “ A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won" (Campbell 1). It is in this storyline that most storytellers need to go by in order to create the most closely related idea of a hero. Even though some heros do not follow these stages and their journey becomes more complex in relation to society, Shakespeare’s character Hamlet, seems to be the most hard to understand. Shakespeare created Hamlet as a hero who corrupts the archetype so much that the basic stages of his heroic journey must be changed in order to recognize him as a hero. Aristotle defined a hero as “a man with outstanding quality and greatness about him. His own destruction is for a greater cause or principle”. Aristotle simply states that the hero's downfall is usually cause by his own fault. Usually the hero’s death is seen as a waste of human potential but usually results in greater knowledge and awareness for whoever hears of the hero’s story...
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...Poetry as Mimesis (Imitation) Aristotle defines all poetry as mimesis (imitation). In other words, poetry imitates nature, which is to say it imitates life, whether natural objects or human actions. For Aristotle, tragedy is an imitation of human action. The concept of art as imitation proved vastly influential in Western literature right up until the eighteenth century, when the Romantic age gave birth to the expressive theory, that poetry arises from the emotions, feelings and impressions of the artist. Aristotle insisted, perhaps consciously in opposition to Plato, that poetry represents something that is real, something that exists in the world. Whereas Plato believed that the poet was cut off from reality, Aristotle saw the poet’s act of imitation as directly connected to life itself, instead of an attempt to reach a larger ideal. In his analysis of the origins of poetry, Aristotle argues that imitation is natural to childhood, and children learn most of their first life lessons through the imitation of others. People are also naturally given to taking pleasure in imitation. Unity of Plot In his analysis of tragedy, Aristotle argues that the most important element is plot. Further, he insists on the necessity of unity in the plot. All the events portrayed must contribute to the plot. There must be no subplots or superfluous elements. Every element of the plot must work together to create a seamless whole. If any part were to be altered or withdrawn, this would leave...
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...Which Play is More Tragic: Hamlet or Agamemnon In my opinion, the play Hamlet is more tragic than Agamemnon. They are both tragedies as they both fulfill Aristotle’s definition of tragedy as they both depict the downfall of a basically good person through some fatal error or misjudgment, which produces suffering and insight on the part of the protagonist and arousing pity and fear on the part of the audience. They also have all the elements of Greek tragedy such as hubris, catharsis, peripeteia, anagnorisis, and hamartia (“Ancient Greek Tragedy”). The most important reason that Hamlet is more tragic, in my opinion, is because the protagonist, Hamlet, is an integral part of the play and his character is much more developed. In Agamemnon , the protagonist, Agamemnon, is a secondary character to his wife who, in my opinion is the main character. Hamlet is a tragic hero, as is Agamemnon, following Aristotle’s criteria for the elements of a tragic hero. For example, they both evoke the audience’s pity and fear, have a major flaw of character and are destined to fall in some way (“Tragedy in Drama”). However, because Hamlet is the main character, we see, hear and understand more of his character. When Hamlet delivers his many dramatic soliloquies about mortality, betrayal, and the futility of life, he shows us his tortured world and the anguish, grief, and uncertainty which eventually takes over his life, leading to his death (“Hamlet Tone”). As the reader, I felt so much sympathy...
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...Jane Doe Professor Urkel ENG-225 24 February 2012 Application of Aristotle's Poetics in the work Apology by Plato According to Aristotle, the criterion that is expressed in Poetics should be based on the matter, subjects and method. For example; for matter, the melody, rhythm and language are the key considerations to be looked into. The subjects in Poetics usually bring out the character traits that are related to human characteristics. This is what brings out the difference between tragic events and comic events in a work of poetry. For tragic events, the character in most instances is usually considered to be more honest, serious and considered to be very important in society. While comic characters are usually considered to be less important in the society and not dignified. The method used could involve the use of direct speech, dialogue or quoted speech. These are the major poetic criteria used by Aristotle and applied in the work Apology by Plato. Plot structure and character are also an important part described Poetics. Plot structure is basically the plan of the work. For Apology, this can be considered into the action or the events that are taking place through this work. For example, there is recognition of the characters and an evidence of the suffering of the main character, Socrates. According to Aristotle, a good plot is one that is complex for the human understanding which can be seen in the Apology. There is the evidence of fear as well as pity for...
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...Aristotle’s Model: The Play as a Whole In Aristotle’s Poetics, Aristotle emphasizes three major elements of a good play: plot, character, and thought. To be more specific, in an Aristotelian play, thought sets the cause of action with character as emotion developer based on plot as the basic form. Besides these three main factors, the idea that a play should be a complete whole is also the basis of the Poetics (Aristotle 61). Therefore, when comparing the choices Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan and The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry for the play of the season, unification and regularity of all three elements. After comparing and contrasting both plays, Lobby Hero fits the Aristotle’s model’s three elements, plot, character and thought better than The Philadelphia Story does because Lobby Hero has a more consistent development of action, characters’ personality and emotions. The imitation of one action is very essential to construct a complete plot. Lobby Hero constructs a smooth unity of action in all of its plots while The Philadelphia Story’s imitation is vague. Although both plays have connected actions that make the structural union of all parts, Lobby Hero has a more surrounded action which is the pursuit of right things. Jeff repeatedly shows his ambition of lending help. For example, he praises William’s kindness when William is baffled by his brother’s incident; he also emphasizes his importance as a “safety specialist” to make himself sound superior. These series...
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...The Importance of Hamlet’s Soliloquies In the Shakespearian tragedy Hamlet, we see the main character, who shares the name of the play, process many of his thoughts and evaluate many different options before he makes each of his decisions through the soliloquies he delivers throughout the play. From the first soliloquy in act 1 to the final one in act 4, many of major events in the play that involve Hamlet are decided through his trains of thought, as well as his opinions on various matters and his methods of dealing with his emotions. In the play, Hamlet’s soliloquies reveal his character by showing three of his most important traits; his indecisiveness, his nobility and his apparent self-hatred. Although Hamlet has many different character traits, and is perhaps one of the most complex characters in any of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the most prominent one is his indecisiveness. He contemplates every one of the major decisions he makes and makes sure that what he is doing is what he thinks is the right thing, and he rarely acts without thinking about it beforehand. Much of this thinking is described in his 7 soliloquies, for instance in the third soliloquy he delivers, he mentions “The spirit that I have seen may be the devil, and the devil hath power T’ assume a pleasing shape. Yea, and perhaps out of my weakness and my melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds more relative to this” (2, 2, 577) which shows that although the...
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...It is known that in literature, a tragedy is one of the most popular genres. It always combines some story which discusses human sufferings with a certain sense of audience fulfillment. The roots of the tragedy are related to ancient Greece. A Greek tragedy is a sad story, which represents a character with a tragic flaw leading to his downfall. In addition, in traditional tragedy, the main character falls from high authority and often it is predetermined by fate, while the audience experiences catharsis (Bloom 2). Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman is considered to be a tragedy because this literary work has some of the main characteristics of the tragedy genre. In this play, the main character Willy Loman possesses such traits and behaviors that lead to his downfall, and the audience experiences catharsis. Willy Loman as a real tragic hero comes to the decision to commit suicide because of serious financial problems of his family (Phelps 79). This play has already been criticized by a number of literary critics who represented different opinions on the plot of the book. The major goal of this paper is to critically evaluate the play Death of a Salesman written by the well-known American writer Arthur Miller, paying special attention to the play’s characteristics of a tragedy. In the play Death of a Salesman, the author investigates human nature and represents his main character as a person whose dissatisfaction with his own life leads to his tragic end. The plot of...
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...Aristotle a Greek philosopher once explained a tragedy to be “the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself and incidents arousing pity and fear,” this simple definition of a tragedy ideally matches the structure of the play Oedipus Rex. This play consists of a king known as Oedipus who has been doomed with a horrendous fate. For example, his prophecy was: “As, that I should lie with my own mother, breed children from whom all men would turn their eyes; and that I should be my father’s murderer,” (42) this was brought upon him by the gods. Oedipus assumed that he could simply run away from this issue that is his destiny. But little did he know he had no power to alter the future, his fate rested in the hands of the Greek gods. The play clearly imitates some believable situations that could possibly occur, such as, anyone can try to expunge their fate. This allows the audience to picture themselves being involved and asking themselves questions regarding the complications the characters are facing. For example, some readers may ask themselves how would they react compared to Oedipus’ decision to run away. The play imitates a serious situation that could happen, this is one reason out of many that makes this play a tragedy. Not only did the play employ serious situations that could occur it also showed incidents that may have caused an audience to feel afraid or even sympathy towards a character. For example, throughout the play...
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...Willy and Oedipus Tragedy Essay Oedipus is a play by Sophocles about a man who saves a town from a sphinx, becomes king,weds with his mother, and kills his father. His whole path is driven by fate. Death of a Salesman is a drama by Arthur Miller about a salesman named Willy Loman who has this big dream to be successful. He ends up failing and commits suicide. Both Oedipus and Willy are exquisite tragic figures, but Willy is superior because he has a higher relation to the audience, had a chance to make it, and Oedipus had no control over what happened to him. Aristotle and Arthur Miller had very different views on what a tragedy entaled. Aristotle thought that a tragedy must start out great, but end in a tragedy. It must have magnitude and portray a serious mood. It can only entail one issue. The audience should feel sorry for the main character and be afraid for what is going to happen to the main character. There must be a catharsis where the main character goes to the lowest point of his existence and the reader or audience splurges their emotions. Oedipus is a perfect example of this type of tragedy. On the other hand, Arthur had a different idea of what a tragedy encompassed. Miller thought that any man could be a tragic hero. It makes it more relatable to a present day audience. There has to be a chance for the main character to make it to his dream but just cannot quite get there. Arthur Miller exhibits his version of tragedy in the drama Death of a Salesman. Oedipus...
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...A tragic hero, without an audiences' sympathy, is nothing more than a wasted character. The hero must have nobility, enough to reward him credibility with their audience. From there, he must reach a turning point from his former fortune to utter misery by the hands of his own landmark flaw. With these three combinations, he must, without exception, achieve audience sympathy; without it his lesson becomes useless, just he himself does. Though she may not fit the mold of the tragic Aristotle defined, Nora surpasses the title entirely. While still holding the three key features of nobility, harmartia, and peripetia, Nora claims victory over Oedipus as audiences willing give her their sympathy, making her the more affective tragic hero. Despite her lack of title, Nora still posses that key element defined in Oedipus and traditional Sophoclean heroes: nobility. King Oedipus posses this trait in only the most literal senses- rank, a crown, and a thousand Thebean subjects shouting “King Oedipus, the sovereign of our land” (Sophocles 1) as a friendly reminder to the power Oedipus holds. As a traditional tragic hero, Oedipus' nobility served as purpose to strike fear into the audience. Sophocles was driven to make the audience believe that, if Oedipus fell so greatly as a King, how worse could it be for them as commoners? The only problem with that, of course, resides in the fact that common peasants have no ability to be sympathetic to a man they cannot relate to. No commoner can relate...
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... Montel Branch English 4 Argumentative essay What makes someone a tragic hero? A tragic hero is someone who makes judgement error that inevitably lead to their own destruction. A hero’s downfall comes from specific traits that cause their destruction. Between the two major characters Antigone and Othello, Othello exemplifies a tragic hero the most from the following reasons error of judgment, reversal of fortune and recognition of change in fate. The tragic hero trait that Othello displays is recognition of reversal was brought by his own actions. The general of the Venetian army, Othello married to wife Desdemona was friends with a trustable man named Iago. Othello made the decision to make Cassio his lieutenant instead of Iago. Iago wanted revenge for not being picked, so he created a plan to make Cassio look bad and convincing Othello to fire Cassio. The plan also progressed into Iago convincing Othello that his wife Desdemona may be cheating on him with Cassio. This then makes a jealous and angry Othello. In the text it states “I was not easily made jealous, but once I was tricked and manipulated, I worked myself into a frenzy.”(Act 5 Scene 2, page 305) This quote shows that Othello allowed Iago’s manipulative words to affect his honorable character. Othello is a tragic hero since he is coming to a realization that the reversal is brought by his own actions of honorable him now being changed to angry and jealous Othello because of Iago’s plan. Reversal in fortune...
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...What is the definition of a tragic hero. To many they would describe it as a person or character's basic goodness and superiority that are marred by a tragic flaw, that brings about or contributes to their downfall. The flaw may be poor judgement, pride, weakness, or an excess of an admirable quality. They recognize their own faults and its consequences ,only after it is too late(definition from book). In the crucible by Arthur Miller, it recognizes John Proctor as a tragic hero for the following reasons; he recognized his own faults ,was honorable, and died doing the right things. In The Crucible, John Proctor is a male in his early 30’s with three sons and a wife. He is a farmer and a holy man. Unfortunately, he is killed in the last act of the story. He was accused of witchery, by hateful girls only pretending they saw a several number of people in their town, that had conversed with the Devil. His only hope of avoiding his death by the rope, was to confess to the lies that he was accused of. John the honest and good man that he is, stayed true and did not confess to the lies even though it could save his life. Most people today would have signed it, but he did not. He rather die than lie, and so he did when he tore the confession. Because it is my name! Because i cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!( His breast...
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...The two most prominent themes included in Sophocles’ play, Oedipus The King, that are also major themes throughout Greek tragedies are fate and sight. Fate, described as unescapable, and sight, described as blindness vs. knowledge, both are incorporated into Sophocles’ play. The main character, Oedipus, is the king of Thebes and viewed as their savior against the sphinx. Oedipus the king, is one of the best known Greek plays, in my opinion, mainly because of Oedipus’ blindness to how his actions were making his fate come true. This particular play gives insight on the Greek concepts of fate and sight with the different prophecies told by an insightful yet blind prophet, Tiresias. Through many examples in this play, fate and sight are intertwined and prove to be the two overarching themes that says a lot about the Greek concepts of these. The theme I find most interesting is fate and the way people decide to react to knowing what is predestined for them. Throughout Greek plays, characters tend to reach out to the Gods or Prophets to get more insight into their lives and learn what is in their future. After hearing their prophecy, they tend to abandon what they have been told and think they can avoid it. Avoiding fate was a recurrent act made by Oedipus and his family. Learning the fate of their child, Laius and Jocasta, left their baby on a mountain side in hopes to prevent the fate given to their child from ever coming true. To their disbelief, their baby, Oedipus, is found and...
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...For a story to be considered a tragedy, the protagonist has to experience a big loss, or in other words a downfall. William Shakespeare, who masters in writing tragedies, portrays the tragedy of a hero in the play Macbeth written in 1606. It is set in Scotland during its medieval times, where the main protagonist Macbeth is a person of nobility being known to be: Scotland’s greatest warrior, the Thane of Glamis, as well as the first cousin to King Duncan. His impending tragedy starts from the moment he is given prophecies by the three witches. Lady Macbeth who is Macbeth’s wife gives the push that drives him into killing King Duncan for the throne. Unknowingly lady Macbeth guides Macbeth towards his downfall, as the action of murdering Duncan...
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