The Essence of Tragedy in The Book of Job and Oedipus Rex :: comparison compare contrast essays

The Essence of Tragedy in The Book of Job and Oedipus Rex In the search for the essence of the tragedy, The Book of Job and Oedipus Rex are central. Each tender tragic protagonist is in some degree a lesser Job or Oedipus, and each new work owes an indispensable agent to the Counselors and to the Grecian idea of the chorus. The Book of Job, especially the Poets treatment of the suffering and distinct Job, is behind Shakespeare and Milton, Melville, Dostoevski, and Kafka. Its mark is on all tragedy of alienation, from Marlowes Faustus to Camus St swearr, in which thither is a sense of separation from a once known, normative, and loved idol or cosmic order or principle of conduct. In emphasize dilemma, choice, wretchedness of soul, and offense, it spiritualized the Promethean theme of Aeschylus and made it more acceptable to the Christianized imagination. In operative into one dramatic context so great a range of mood---from pessimism and despair to bitterness, defiance, and e xalted insight---it is father to all tragedy where the stress is on the inner dynamics of mans response to destiny. Oedipus stresses non so much mans guilt or forsakeness as his ineluctable lot, the stark realities which are and always exit be. The classic tradition is less nostalgic and less visionary---the difference world in emphasis, not in kind. There is little pining for a lost Golden Age, or yearning for utopia, redemption, or heavenly restitution. alone if it stresses mans fate, it does not deny him freedom. Dramatic action, of course, posits freedom without it no tragedy could be written. In Aeschylus Prometheus Kratos (or Power) says, None is free but Zeus, but the whole tactical maneuver proves him wrong. Even the Chorus of helpless Sea Nymphs, in siding with Prometheus in the end, defy the bidding of the gods. Aeschylus Orestes was told by Apollo to murder his mother, but he was not compelled to. The spirit with which he acquiesced in his destiny ( a theme which Gre ek tragedy stresses as Job does not) is of a free man who, though fated, could have withdrawn and not acted at all. Even Euripides, who of all the Greek Tragedians had the direst view of the gods compulsiveness in mans affairs, shows his Medea and Hippolytus as proud and decisive forgiving beings. And, as Cedric Whitman says about the fate of Oedipus, the prophecy merely predicted Oedipus future, it did not get hold it.