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Greek Tragedies in a Modern World Essay

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Greek Tragedies in a Modern World
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From the times of Aristotle to modern day Boal people have tried to come up with a definition of tragedy that encompasses all of the works they feel to be tragedies. However, there are always a few exceptions to their rules that make their thesis insubstantial. Those who define tragedies all have different elements that they say are necessary in classifying something as a tragedy. Unfortunately for us, no one definition has ever been settled upon that everyone agrees with. The one factor that does seem to be present in every interpretation of what is necessary in a tragedy is the catharsis that is brought up in the viewer. Without that emotional reaction, whether of pity, …show more content…

By doing this, Racine made Phedre a more pitiable character with whom the audience is more capable of sympathizing. She is seen more as a incapacitated bystander rather than a ruthless, malicious offender. By reducing her offence to that of allowing Oenone to act, Racine gave the opportunity to pity Phedre because she was not directly guilty for Hippolytus' death. Doing this enables the audience to look at her internal agony rather than pass over it because they are repulsed by her actions. He changed Hippolytus' character so that he was actually in love for the first time with Aricia, rather than feeling nothing for any woman, so the whole element of female jealousy was introduced. By changing the story in these ways Racine shifts the characters that the audience feels pity for and makes the play easier to relate to. At the end of the play, the audience feels sympathy for Hippolytus because he is the innocent victim of both a mother's improper lust and a father's quick-tempered stubbornness. For Phedre the audience feels sympathy for her dilemma; the fact that this all started because of Aphrodite's curse that was not her fault, and the fact that she was tormented by a love that could never be. They do not, however, pardon her actions, or lack thereof, that are a result of those feelings. For Aricia the audience feels happy that she got her kingdom back, but they feel bad that she got pulled into all of this. She is very much the innocent

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