The Shift from Plot to Character

We feel the breadth of the centuries that assure us from this culture. In order to approach Grecian calamity we have to forget or at least set out to bracket our forward-looking dialect on the psychology of the unmarried. Our modern fierceness on character is perhaps out of typeset when we enter the world of Greek Tragedy: "Modern audiences, brought up on post-Ro homosexualtic literature with its overwhelming emphasis on the individual, and instruct by modern psychological terminology, expect a playwright to be primarily concerned with the unique aspect of to each i man's experience, with the solitary focus of consciousness. . . . When they first read a Greek play they are naturally inclined to interpret what the characters offer and do as if the ancient dramatist shared their soaking up with idiosyncratic detail" (Easterling 138). However, Greek tragedy places much to a greater extent emphasis on plot than it does on character.

The emphasis on plot and action is characteristic of Sophecles' Oedipus. The title character of this play, season one can certainly see a direct of character development, is not the individual of modern drama. When we first abide Oedipus our first impression is his overwhelming concern for the city which has been plunged into plague. He first and foremost establishes himself in the role of King and guardian of his people. Oedipus promises the people of Thebes to do all he can to let off them f

Kaufmann, Walter. Tragedy and Philosophy. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1969.

deportee was perhaps the greatest sentence that could be imposed on an individual in antediluvian Greece. Oedipus' captureing at the finish up of the play is intensified by the fact that he survives to suffer for the sins he calls his own. He requests banishment as the supreme punishment: "Cast me out of this land. Cast me out to where no man can see me" (Sophecles 486). The supreme sentence of banishment evinces the immensity of the community to the individual in Greek society (it should be noted that the sentence of banishment is also a rough-cut punishment in Shakespeare as is evinced by the speeches of Mowbray and Bullingbrook early in Richard II).

In fact it is anachronistic to use the term individual when we refer to this aloof culture. The term for the individual in Ancient Greece, the idiot, from the Greek idiotes meaning something like one in a private station, was, as we can see from what the word has have it off to mean in its modern usage, not something of which to be proud. We index speculate that the emphasis on plot and action or else than character is a result of the Ancient Greek emphasis on the community quite a than the individual. We cannot stress enough that identity in Ancient Greece is a punishment and not something one attempts to achieve.

Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy. Connecticut: Fawcett, [no date listed].

In conclusion, we have seen the displacement reaction in emphasis from plot to character that is exhibited in Oedipus and critical point respectively. We have also speculated as to why this shift has occurred. Indeed, it is quite in the spirit of the Greeks to emphasis plot and unity rather than the individual. In like manner, it is quite appropriate for modernity to emphasis character rather than plot. After all, Shakespeare's Hamlet is a precursor of the modern Cartesian problematic with its emphasis on the playing field over and against the objective world. Hamlet exe
Ordercustompaper.com is a professional essay writing service at which you can buy essays on any topics and disciplines! All custom essays are written by professional writers!