Tradgedy 2 Essay Research Paper Foolis HeartsTragedy — страница 2

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principle goodness that coexists with evil. Tragic man is man at his most prideful and independent, man glorying in his humanity. (Sewall) Oedipus, Macbeth and Gatsby were good men who at he highest points in their life became intertwined in evil. The title characters had all built themselves upstanding reputations and had reached points higher than they had ever been. At this point the self destruction began. Oedius self-destruction comes at his highest point. Oedipus was a good king, but fooled others into believing that he was invincible. He was fooled by their confidence and dug deeper into a past no one wanted to touch with a ten foot pole. When he learned the truth he realized that indeed he could never deceive himself, even if he could deceive others. Macbeth, like

Oedipus, reached selfdestruction at his highest point. Macbeth was Thane of Cawdor, riding high on a military victory and on top of the world. This confidence was a facade he put up to advance himself. He had fooled even King Duncan into believing he was greater than he really was. Then he wanted to be king. He reached for his goal, grabbed it and then fell. He fooled everyone up to that point but when he was king he too realized that he was not all he cracked himself up to be. James Gatz was nothing near what he cracked himself up to be. Gatsby was a millionaire, he was as close to Daisy as he d ever be, but he too wanted that extra step. Gatsby knew all along that he was not anything near the person he portrayed. This lack of self- confidence in his facade allowed for cracks to

become gaps between him and those that he had fooled. He like the rest had never fooled himself and they all, because of that failure, lacked the foundation to fully reach the self set goals for which they strived. The tragic man is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing- his sense of personal dignity. Tragedy is the consequence of a man s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly. (Miller) Oedipus, Macbeth and Gatsby were all self critical perfectionists, for whom nothing was ever good enough. Their personal dignity lost its strength when there were close, but not on, the next level of power and accomplishment. They had always fooled others into believing that they were good enough at the point at which they were, but they always evaluated themselves as as

underachievers who had not accomplished everything of which they were able. This evaluation continued until they reached a point where they felt they had superseded their ability and their deceptive charade began to crumble. They were so highly critical that it was not others who eventually crushed their personal dignity, but their own ideals of success and failure. Oedipus as a king would have high goals, but at a certain point goals that are to high are tragic. Oedipus was an accomplished king, but his Kingdom was in famine so in order maintain his reputation as a good king he sought to correct this. To him the suffering of his people was a greater blow to his personal dignity and ideals of success than any scandal he could imagine. He sought to fix every problem that arose.

This work ethic tragically brought him down. Oedipus brought on the scandal of his father s death and his mother s bed because he was too critical of his job as king. It is not to suggest that his self evaluation was wrong, just that his compulsion over it highlighted the fact that all in all he had never fooled himself into believing that he was an innocent king. Macbeth never thought he was innocent nor did he overly evaluate his job as king. He evaluated his position as Thane and almost fooled himself into believing that he would be a worthy king. He may have been had he not killed Duncan, after that he neglected the self evaluation of personal dignity because to him there was no dignity left to evaluate. He had gone from a Thane who was thought highly of, to a king that no

one liked. There was nothing left in Macbeth’s life left for him to evaluate and brood over till he had reached perfection. At this low point Macbeth died. Unlike Macbeth, Gatsby dies at the point where he is considered the most dignified person in the novel. Jay Gatsby, out of all of the title of characters of the analyzed tragedies, is the most personally critical. He had to be. He had to rise from the lowest to the highest in the shortest amount of time. Gatsby s death occurs when he finally realizes that he never fooled anyone and was content on a notch lower than perfection. He had settled for a point much higher than he ever should have gotten and had found his niche. He no longer needed to risk life and limb to maintain personal dignity. He had found balance, on the raft