“Oedipus Rex”, “The Glass Menagerie”, “The Angels in America”
The tragedies have always seemed to attract a wide range of audience because of the depth of the emotions revealed there and the turns of events which would be dreadful and inescapable, the complexity of its characters and main issues present in the plays, as well as because of a possibility for the spectators to connect to the events happening on the stage and empathize with the protagonists.
When considering the tragedy as the work of art, it is essential to view it from historical perspective, too, and try to reveal its very origins and the basic ideas which the tragedy was bestowed with back then. This essay aims to compare and contrast the protagonists of the three following dramatic works: “Oedipus Rex”, “The Glass Menagerie”, “The Angels in America”. They will be described and interpreted from the perspective of the concept of tragic hero, which was introduced and applied by Aristotle. One more aspect of the essay would be to distinguish the level of relevance of this ancient concept and how exactly it has been reshaped to complement the philosophy and principles of modern world.
Aristotle's “Poetics” may serve as a guideline for many future dramatists, thus it is able to provide the basic ideas of how a tragedy should look like and which ideas to express. In his book Aristotle provides the following vision and principles of tragedy: “So, then, the artistically made plot must necessarily involve a change not from bad fortune to good fortune but the other way round, from good fortune to bad” (Aristotle)– he states. Therefore a perfect tragic plot, in his point of view, is the one that could awaken a deep feeling of compassion, anxiety, and certainly imply the complexity of different issues.
Aristotle has its own specific perspective on the notion of tragic character, the one which later became a classic one and was applied in the numerous numbers of plays throughout all the next centuries. The tragic hero, according to Aristotle, is the one who experiences a rapid and great fall “from good fortune to bad fortune” related to an accident or the life events for which the protagonist neither can be responsible for nor somehow influence and change them. Therefore a tragic hero, according to Aristotle, is a person who makes a judgment mistake which fatally leads the one to one's own destruction. (Aristotle). It is also important to emphasize that tragic hero, according to Aristotle, is “a man such as we have described or else on the good rather than the bad side.” (Aristotle). Therefore the protagonist is not an evil character, but rather the one who has truly good traits and virtues. The notion of tragic hero though is a really complex one, thus it will be further analyzed step-by-step while comparing it to the protagonists of the plays “Oedipus Rex”, “The Angels in America” and “The Glass Menagerie”.
The concept of fall as the main element of Aristotle's perception of a tragic hero. As Aristotle claims, "a man doesn't become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall." (Aristotle). The same notion of fall can be clearly identified in all the chosen for analysis plays: in “Oedipus Rex”, the protagonist encounters a dramatic prophecy which defines his fate: due to this prophecy, Oedipus is doomed to kill his own father and marry his mother. Thus Oedipus turns out to be a victim of his own fate, crying desperately and bewailing his life: "O god-all come true, all burst to light! O light-now let me look my last on you! I stand revealed at last-cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands!” (Sophocles).
Another play introduces us with Prior Walter, the protagonist of the Kushner's work “Angels in America”, who meets his fall as he discovers that he has AIDS and gets abandoned by his beloved after it. Thus he may be considered as a main victim of fate in the play, the greatest tragic hero within it. What is also striking that the notion of prophecy is also present in the plot, as well as in the “Oedipus Rex”. Just the same as Oedipus bemoaning and criticizing his destiny, the same do the protagonists of the play by Kushner: Mormon mother describes Harper her perception of the world and life experience: “God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in” – he states, continuing: “he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain!”(Kushner). The dramatic affects of change is described extremely acutely: “We can't even talk about that. And then he everything back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.” (Kushner). The question of change comes as a central theme of the play and is introduced though almost all the play's protagonists, who are the subjects of changes and ultimately the ones who change to the great extend within the flow of the life. Therefore there is a great deal of tragism which lies on the fates of the protagonists.
“The Glass Menagerie” is also an extremely tragic story and a greatly complex one: as there are for equal protagonists in the play, each of them has its own challenges to be faced with. For example, Amanda Wingfield faces an inevitable fact that his previously astonishing beauty and charm is fading away, which comes to her as a great disaster, his daughter Laura has to bear her fate of being a physically disabled, and his son Tom meets challenges in his self-realization and is deeply drowned into the anxiety about the his future prospects, or rather a constant total lack of them. Tom Wingfield thus expresses his hatred and despair about his own life through the following quote: “I'd rather somebody packed up a crowbar and battered out my brains-than go back mornings! I go!” (Williams) Describing his dead-end job, Tom speaks of his life with a sense of a great misery and deeply-rooted dissatisfaction and disappointment: “Every time you come in yelling that Goddamn 'Rise and Shine! Rise and Shine!' I say to myself, 'How lucky dead people are!' But I get up. I go!” (Williams). Nowadays, such fate may be considered in modern world by far not less tragic than Oedipus's one. A common feature all of the Wingfield family, meaning, the play's protagonists, is the refusal of a reality which seems too hard and painful for them, which may be interpreted as incapacity to embrace their fate and fight for their own better destiny.
There is a whole set of feature which are typical for a common Aristotle's tragic hero, which will be attempted to be traced in the protagonists of the discussed plays. What is remarkable for the Aristotelians protagonists is that his tragic heroes are primarily strikingly average – they are deliberately neither worse nor better than ordinary people in terms of morals and actions. This allows the spectators to relate to them and therefore empathize. It also introduces pity, which is crucial in Aristotelian tragedy. As well as in Aristotle's theatre works, the realism of human nature is realistically outlined in the “Angels in America”.
Related to Aristotle’s key concept of the fall, another peculiar characteristic lies in the fact that a hero is considered doomed from the very beginning: just as Oedipus and his prophecy, Prior Walter and the AIDs, and correspondingly as Laura with her disability and Tom Wingfield with his dead-end job. The fate facing them is both bitter and hopeless, worthy of a greatest despair to feel. According to the tragic hero concept, however, the heroes should face their own destiny respectively, and take it for granted.
One more notable aspect of a tragic hero is the sufferings, which seem to be greater than the one actually deserves, as any of the characters of the play – neither Oedipus nor Prior Walter - wasn’t responsible for the destiny the one was given. Therefore one more key point which complements the profile of tragic hero is a matter of heroes' choices and inevitability. Still, the tragic hero in any of the discussed plays is obliged to make important decision, based not on the emotions or morals, but on one's intellect, and thereafter to learn from one's own mistakes. “Misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty” (Aristotle) - claims Aristotle. A case of Tom Wingfield, the protagonist of “The Glass Menagerie”, may be provided as a proof and an example to this statement: after lengthy considerations Tom leaves his mother and sister and takes off wandering, the load of his regrets, however, keeps overwhelming him as the memories of Laura constantly emerge in his mind. According to Aristotle, life experience makes the protagonist wounded, just as in the Tom's situation.
While defining the concept of tragedy, Aristotle emphasizes on the notion of "catharsis", which is an essential element in the drama. Catharsis, consequently, as described by Cambridge Dictionary, is considered “the process of releasing strong emotions through a particular activity or experience in a way that helps to understand those emotions”. Thus it was expected from the Aristotelian audience to be feeling a great level of emotional connection towards the actors, greatly empathizing with them – it concerned mainly such feelings as fear and pity. The ultimate aim of this approach was for the audience to reach the final sense of exaltation and purifying together with an elevated perception on the notion of the gods and men, life and fate.
While “Oedipus Rex” is considered a classic example of application of Aristotle's principles, both of the tragedy and the tragic heroes themselves, the plays created by Tennessee Williams and Tony Kushner, even though taking some of its basic features, still deviate from the Aristotle's concept of the tragedy. It is rather reshaped by the needs of the century, which is, obviously, strikingly different from the ancient one, as well as adjusted to the preferences of the society, the audience itself. Such changes were inevitable to happen, as the works of art should reveal a great level of relevance in term of current state of the world and its main tendencies. While “Oedipus” left the spectators with a final message that human beings are absolutely powerless to define their own fate, as a prudent humility and obedience to gods were highly promoted at that time, 21st century bears another message for society. Therefore Kushner's play emphasizes on a great strength and hope in humanity and their capacities to be the masters of their own lives.
Works Cited
Aristotle. Tragic hero as defined by Aristotle. Bainbridge Island School District. Web. 1 Sept.
2016.
Kushner, Tony. Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. New York: Theatre
Communications Group, 1993. Print.
Sophocles, , David Grene, and Sophocles. Oedipus the King. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2010. Print.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions Books: 1999. Print.
