Keenan Thomas
February 16, 2011
English 1102
Professor Mccandless
Tragedies
All of these tragedies were very harsh because I’m pretty sure it’s not as easy to kill your
family, or even someone you don’t like, as they make it seem. Throughout all these tragedies
most people did not even think twice before they killed someone. They were just running
around killing people, as if they had no conscience. Titus Andronicus shows this violence more
than most of the other plays, they definitely did not think twice about committing a crime. The
end of the play is when this was showed the most. At the end of the play Titus killed Lavinia his
own daughter first and it started a chain reaction of murders. Titus then kills Tamora after he
tells her that her two sons are baked in the pie that they are all eating. How could you bake
someone into a pie and make their mother eat them? The characters in this play obviously had
no conscience. I understand killing they two boys because they raped his daughter and cut out
her tongue. Then Titus was killed by Saturninus. Lucius then kills Saturninus by shoving a huge
spoon down his throat! All this is evident in the lines [in Titus Andronicus]
An if your highness knew my heart, you were.
My lord the emperor, resolve me this:
Was it well done of rash Virginius
To slay his daughter with his own right hand,
Because she was enforced, stain'd, and deflower'd?
It was, Andronicus.
Your reason, mighty lord?
Because the girl should not survive her shame,
And by her presence still renew his sorrows.
Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee;
And, with thy shame, thy father's sorrow die!
What hast thou done, unnatural and unkind?
Kill'd her, for whom my tears have made me blind.
I am as woful as Virginius was,
And have a thousand times more cause than he
To do this outrage: and it now is done.
What, was she ravish'd? tell who did the deed.
Will't please you eat? will't please your
highness feed?
Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?
Not I; 'twas Chiron and Demetrius:
They ravish'd her, and cut away her tongue;
And they, 'twas they, that did her all this wrong.
Go fetch them hither to us presently.
Why, there they are both, baked in that pie;
Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.
'Tis true, 'tis true; witness my knife's sharp point.
Die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed!
Can the son's eye behold his father bleed?
There's meed for meed, death for a deadly deed! (V.iii.?).
Shakespeare took that play too its full potential of violence, and it is by far my favorite play by
him. Violence in the Oresteia was not quite as intense as violence in Titus Andronicus. The
characters in this tragedy had somewhat of a conscience, unlike those in Titus Andronicus, but
they still had no mercy about killing people.
The characters in the Oresteia did actually think about killing their own flesh and blood
instead of just slaying them right there on the spot. They thought about it but I still don’t think
they felt very bad about doing it because it didn’t really affect them after committed the
crimes. An example of this violence is when Orestes was going to kill his mother but he paused
right before the murder and asked if it was right, like he didn’t know it was wrong. This is
denoted in these lines: ‘Orestes! Have pity! These breasts you nestled on and nuzzled the
nipples for their nourishing milk. What shall I do? Shame, pity, awe all make me shrink from
killing my mother’. Orestes had no shame or pity he killed his mother right there on the spot,
and to me it don’t seem like it was a hard decision for him.( )
In Violence and the Sacred they speak of violence being a big circle. They say that we
are fortunate that our chain was broken by our judicial system. This is shown in the line:
Vengeance is a vicious circle whose effect on primitive societies can only be surmised.
For us the circle has been broken. We owe our good fortune to one of our social institutions
above all: our judicial system, which serves to deflect the menace of vengeance (2).
It only makes sense though, vengeance is stupid now if you try and get revenge on someone
for a crime you’re going to end up in jail. They didn’t have this judicial system so when they
wanted revenge on someone they got it, and they didn’t think twice about it. They though if
someone you loved got murdered that the only way to get vengeance was to do the same thing
and murder them or someone that they loved. That is the only real vengeance, but for us we
just get to see people rot in jail. Jail would not have satisfied them enough.
Hamlet was also about vengeance but was not really that violent. Hamlet wanted to
avenge his father’s death but he didn’t know who killed him. His father, as a ghost, eventually
told him who his murderer was. When Hamlet found out he was shocked that his father
wanted him to get revenge on his relative, much less the king. This is depicted in the line:
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. Murder! Murder the foul, as in the best
it is; But this most foul, strange and unnatural. Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings
as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge (I.iiiii.7).
Hamlet was very slow in doing things and he always put stuff off to the side. He seen Claudius
praying and he wanted to wait until he was done praying to slay him. He thought if he slayed
him while he was praying he would go to heaven, and he wanted him in hell. This is shown in
the line:
Now might I do it pat, now his is praying; And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann’d A villain kills my father; and for that, I, his
sole son, do this same villain send To heaven (III.iii.1).
So hamlet in the end didn’t have much of a conscience his self, but he was not as violent as
everyone else.