Poetic devices

Eugene O’Neill has been celebrated as one of the most influential dramatists from America. He wanted to imbue modern American theater with the poignancy of Greek drama and therefore the tragic struggle of his dramatis personae and their moral conflicts can be traced back to the olden times when individual suffering touched the heights of heroic grandeur in its nobility and sheer helplessness. Although he substituted the role of fate and Gods with modern psychological theories to make his…

Othello may be a hero but he gets fooled like a villain. In Othello, Othello is what you would call a "tragic hero." What I mean by that is he may be seen as something that brings hope and goodness but his challenges and his own jealousy bring him at his fall. One of his many challenges is not something but someone.The one and only manipulative Iago. Iago is the key villain in this story; he twists peoples minds with his words. Even though Othello does not know he is being fooled, us being the…

Romeo and Juliet is a masterpiece by far and has yet to dissatisfy anyone who has experienced either a play or movie variation of the play. This is undeniably because of this story’s plot and the elements of Romeo and Juliet. They way Shakespeare wrote it hooks a viewer and pulls that viewer along for a ride into what will undoubtedly be a somber love story. So the viewer stays for the long ride and holds onto that little bit of hope that in the end everything works out but to their discontent…

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the title character, Hamlet, reflects many qualities featured in Greek tragedies, such as his fatal flaw, his fall from grace, and his knowledge of forces acting against him, thus making Hamlet the definition of tragic hero. One important quality that all tragic Greek heroes possess is a fatal flaw. A part of the hero’s personality that brings about their downfall (ie pride). Hamlet is like a Greek hero on steroids when it comes to fatal flaws. He has not one,…

Tragedy is an unescapable abyss that not only haunts heroes, but also the common man. In the play “Oedipus the King”, Sophocles tells the story of Oedipus, who strives to defy his prophecy, to ultimately show that fate is predestined and cannot be avoided. Upon hearing his destiny, he ignorantly puts the foretelling aside and suffers from dramatic irony as well as elements of astonishment and great change throughout the play. Thus, “Oedipus the King” is a prime example of a tragedy with the…

When the question was asked by E.R. Dodds saying, “In what sense, if any, does the Oedipus Rex attempt to justify the ways of God to man?” The candidates’ answers fell into three groups. The first group said how you get what you deserve, saying how Oedipus was not a good man and deserved his punishment. The second group said that the play was a “tragedy of destiny” because the play proves that no man has free will because they are just puppets in the gods show. The third group said that…

A definition of madness is the mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it. A quote by a famous poet named Emily Dickinson says: “ Much of madness is divinest Sense- to a discerning Eye-” and I think this means that what is sometimes declared as “madness” or crazy is actually the most knowledgeable kind of sanity. In the play Death of a Salesman one of the main character’s name is Willy. Willy is the type of person who’s life is consumed with his desire for success, he craves…

dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions.” The drama however can be used as a tool to view the world through a political lens. The play acts as an allegorical device shining a light on contemporary issues of, succession, civil war., political and religious upheaval which characterised the Jacobean era (1567-1625) Macbeth’s narrative cleverly intertwines the tension within Jacobean society and places it in…

Despite having high self-esteem and what some might even consider an immodest demeanor, I rarely feel so pleased with myself as when I pretend to be someone else. As a child, this fascination for impersonation developed when I played games with other kids in which we pretended to be knights, superheroes, and other classic children’s fantasies. I loved these divertissements, but it wasn’t until I was chosen for the lead role as a cursed hunter in my class play when I was six that I realized I had…

The Greek culture is renowned for political reforms (demokratia), architecture (such as the Parthenon) and the arts - however, one of their most important contributions deals with our understanding of revenge and cruelty. One salient example of cyclic revenge and the effects it can have on others is present in Aeschylus’s play “The Libation Bearers”. Before delving into the Greek Tragedy unit, I had little interest or admiration for these great works - now my outlook has evolved. Although “The…