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Last week we learned all about tragedy and the different types. This week we looked at actual examples of tragedy, but not until later in the week. We started the week out with a Ted talk, and the video was more along the lines of defining success and failure. Then, we read the story of Oedipus. It is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles, written around 429 B.C. It is a tragic story that involves a very peculiar prophecy that goes like so; a baby born by Laius and Jocasta will grow up to kill his father and bring tragedy to the city and the family. It seems like a pretty avoidable tragedy to most. But Jocasta give the three day old child to a servant and asks the servant to, "do away" with the child. Now, the readers don't know at this point in the book, but the servant actually takes the child to a far away city, where he thinks the child will never come to light. Years later, Oedipus is an adult, and has saved the city of Thebes. He is now hailed as a hero and the greatest of the great. He also just so happens to be married to Jocasta with multiple children. To keep this short and sweet, multiple men come and start to reveal the truth to Oedipus that he is Jocasta's son, and that they have committed every single sin in the book. At first he does not believe this, but soon starts to hunt for the truth, and eventually ends up finding it. When Jocasta has realized what has happened, she kills herself before Oedipus can in a blinding rage. When Oedipus finds his mother/wife dead, he takes the broaches from Jocasta's clothing and gauges out his eyes. He does this so that he no longer has to look at the evil he has committed, and can see nothing but the truth. This is a great example of tragedy. Oedipus was on top of the world, but when the prophecy came true he became the lowest man in the city. The people who once looked up to him now looked at him with disgust and no longer want anything to do with him. He is banished from the land and can no longer see his children. He went from having everything to nothing, creating the perfect tragedy, for a writer at least. This website,http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/globaldrama/oedipus-rex-as-a-classical tragedy.html#.WCXfj9UrLnA goes more into depth on what elements of the story classifies it as a tragedy. I really loved reading the story of Oedipus this week, not only for the fascinating story but how it also taught me more about what a tragedy in writing is, and I feel like that was the point of this week's lesson.
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This was a very difficult week for me. In all my time in this class, I think the AIE format was a hard concept to grasp. It made sense when described to me, but actually writing in the format myself was very challenging. But on top of that, we learned about tragedy. The three wiki pages that we were given to read up on the topic of tragedy was a little confusing to me, because the idea of tragedy that I had in my head was a little different from the wiki pages. They talked about the art of tragedy and how they were written into plays a long time ago. I looked more into tragedy of the commons, and in my mind I thought of national tragedies such as terrorism, but the wiki page described it more along the lines of a shared resource being drained. We were then asked to write a blog on the matters, which I thought was the most difficult part of the week. I sat at home for a good 45 minutes trying to write the blog, and I didn't really know what to base it on, even though we had to examples to look at. Not only did I have to relearn the meaning of tragedy, I had to write about it and on top of that put it into an AIE format. The end result was a very poor blog post but none the less I finished. I'm not trying to say I didn't learn anything this week because that wouldn't be true, but I don't necessarily agree or understand what I learned this week, at least for the tragedy part. The AIE format is more clear than it was, but I'm still probably going to do it wrong in the end. When I say I don't agree with the tragedy portion of the week, I just think it's strange the way the wiki pages showed it. The idea of tragedy that I have set up in my head was very different, and I had to look up some different pages that went more into depth on those ideas, just like this page. http://tragedy.sdsu.edu/tragedy.sdsu.edu/. I took tragedy of the commons to mean more along the lines of death and destruction, as opposed to a shared resource or an environmental issue, but this page really helped me understand that. |
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