The Imperfect Tragedy

This week we've been studying the tragedy of Oedipus Rex, or Oedipus the King of Thebes. This play has often been referred to as "the perfect tragedy", however I would disagree. While, I do think the story has an extremely tragic ending, I felt like throughout the centuries, the play's ability to connect with the audience has greatly diminished. Not only do we no longer have prophets to foretell our futures, but we no longer have such divine rulers that obtain so much power. While reading Oedipus, while it did have a much more enticing storyline than Crito or The Apology, I felt like I had no application of the story to my life. There was no relevance. I think that one of the main points of a play is to be able to capture the audience and reel them into the story, however I felt that Oedipus was lacking this quality. It was just something to read, but it left no lasting impression and sparked no thought process about my own life. Perhaps, I was just not adequately reading the play, but I feel like should I go back and repeat the process, I would still maintain the same monotone feeling about the script.

Is there something that I was not doing in order to be able to absorb all of the aspects of the reading? I'm hoping that throughout this year, considering the fact that we will be reading a lot of older literature, that I will be able to learn how to better involve myself in the stories that we are trying to become a part of.

From Progress to Digress

This week in English, we spent a lot of time focusing on ancient Greek philosphers. So far, we've read two of Plato's dialogues which revolve around Socrates. The first was The Apology and the second was Crito. The Apology was Socrates' defense statement that he made to the jury of Athens while he was on trial for corrupting the youth and going against the Greek Gods. I thought that the concept of someone being on trial for corrupting the youth was almost humorous. With all of the "corrupting" influences that we have in today's society that are aimed directly at young people, it's amazing that such a thing could have ever been considered criminal. Billions of dollars are spent on marketing teams who are paid to find out exactly what it is that young people want and how to convince them that their lives are inadequate without the selling product. If the Athenian jury were to see American society today, I'm sure that the verdict would be Hemlock for everyone. However, when California was in such a heated state over Prop 8, many supporters argued that teaching the possibility of homosexual marriage in classrooms would be unacceptable and would give young children the wrong idea. It seems to me that as seemingly far as society comes, the more similar it seems.