Elements of Plot Necessary for Tragic Action from Aristotle's Poetics

Elements of Plot Necessary for Tragic Action from Aristotle's Poetics:
"Tristan's Revenge," A Scene from Legends of the Fall Analyzed Using Classical Criticism

“Chance occurrences seem most remarkable when they have the appearance of having been brought about by design” (Poetics 70). Aristotle in his treatise on tragedy, Poetics, sets forth the elements of tragedy most critical in arousing emotions of pity and fear. These elements including portentous or ironic chance occurrence, reversal, recognition, and suffering are critical in maximizing the tragic action of this YouTube clip. The scene begins with two brothers, Sam and Tristan, searching for each other amidst the chaos of a battlefield. When the brothers hear each other's calls there is a moment of elation, joy at the impending reunion, but as Sam stumbles blindly towards Tristan's voice he becomes entangled in barbed wire. Tristan arrives just in time to watch as his brother's body is riddled with bullets by enemy soldiers. Tristan frees his dying brother from the wire so that he may expire in his arms. This heart-wrenching scene is so powerful because it maximizes the “catharsis” of pity and fear in its audience. The plot is manipulated in such a way that each element of tragic action is interwoven with another; the tension steadily increases until the climactic ending is reached. “Incidents that awaken fear and pity...are heightened when things happen unexpectedly but because of each other” (70).

The scene is all the more remarkable because of the way it is constructed, built around the shocking element of portentous chance occurrence. One brother does not merely watch another die. Rather, Tristan is nearly responsible for Sam's death as it was the sound of his voice, his searching calls, that Sam was running towards. Tristan's “fall into misery is not due to vice and depravity,” but rather to this well-intentioned error (73). Had Tristan not attempted to save his brother, Sam might have survived. This chance occurrence is so heavily invested with meaning that it seems to have been wrought by design. It is thus much more effective than one that appears “merely mechanical or accidental” (70).
This same scene is also representative of reversal and recognition. “A recognition is a change from ignorance to knowledge...the most effective form of discovery is that which is accompanied by a reversal” (71). The details of the reversal and recognition in this clip are more realistic in nature and not as literal as the examples that Aristotle gives. However they still function as pivots in the plot employed to arouse pity and fear. “A reversal is a change from one state of affairs to its opposite” (70). For example, Sam is running towards his believed salvation when he is killed. This reversal operates simultaneously with the recognition moment of the scene. As Aristotle surmised, recognition and reversal are most powerful when they occur in combination. Watching his brother die, Tristan realizes that he has failed in his role protector. Rather than an episode of recognition between two distinct characters, this is a moment of self-recognition. The element of recognition is extended even further as Tristan recognizes the destructive, ugly nature of war and projects his anger and hatred onto the enemy soldiers. This projection which spurns Tristan's blood-thirsty revenge together with Tristan's own moment of self-recognition both fall somewhere within the third and fourth categories of recognition that Aristotle describes: recognition due to memory and recognition due to reasoning (78). Again the recognition in this scene is not as straightforward as the examples offered in Poetics. Nonetheless I still believe it to be a form of recognition as the character is arriving at understanding; he is moving from a naive, innocent perspective to a hardened, knowledgeable one. The audience is drawn into the character's pain during these moments of reversal and recognition. The portentous chance occurrence catches the audience off-guard so that they become caught up in the action. They then follow the scene in real-time, experiencing the reversal and recognition along with Tristan; this primes the audience for the suffering that follows.
Suffering, along with reversal and recognition, comprise Aristotle’s three elements of tragic plot. Aristotle defines suffering as: “an action of a destructive or painful nature, such as deaths openly represented, physical agonies, woundings, and the like” (71). Sam's “openly represented death,” witnessed by his brother ideally embodies the plot element of suffering as it is described by Aristotle.
To summarize this scene has the requisites of tragedy that Aristotle outlines in Poetics. The plot reveals a change in fortune that moves “from prosperity to misery...due, not to depravity, but to some great error” in a man “just like ourselves” (73). Furthermore, it is ordered in such a way that “even without seeing it performed, anyone merely hearing about the incidents will shudder with fear and pity as a result of what is happening” (74).

Works Cited

Aristotle. “Poetics.” Classical Literary Criticism. Trans. T.S. Dorsch and Penelope Murray. London: Penguin Books, 2004. 57-97.
“Tristan’s Revenge.” .

Hungry?...Thirsty?...Curious? A Word Picture and a Semiotic Analysis

Here--perhaps--we have two lovers, both in the full bloom of blushing youth. Their unadulterated freshness matched only by the crisp, newness of the salad greens that the enraptured female is attempting to toss. While she, at least, still maintains a semblance of attention to the meal's preparation, the male has abandoned all interest in the vegetarian dish. Instead, his carnivorous desires have drawn him to the flesh of his beloved's exposed neck. With his arms wrapped around her midsection, he appears to be smelling her—either tenderly inhaling the scent of her shampoo or sniffing at her sweat as a canine may do in investigating another. Husband, vampire, or dog...your guess is as good as mine.

In creating my word picture I willfully and intellectually choose combinations of words to express my thoughts. Now, I will take a semiotic approach in examining the language of my word picture. According to Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, “In separating language from speaking we are at the same time separating: (1) what is social from what is individual; and (2) what is essential from what is accessory and more or less accidental” (Saussure 59). Semiotics is concerned with the “social side of speech,” specifically Saussure defines it as the study of “life signs within society” (60). A sign, in this case a linguistic sign, consists of the signified or the concept and the signifier or the sound-image (62). In the first sentence of my word picture I decided to describe the male and female in the image as “lovers,” lovers being the signifier and the male and female being the signified. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, thus I could have chosen any number of terms to replace “lovers.” I settled upon “lovers” by comparing the term with other “words that stand in opposition to it.” As Saussure explains, “words used to express related ideas limit each other reciprocally;” I selected “lovers” by evaluating the term against similar ones such as friends, soul mates, buddies. Had none of these similar terms existed, “lovers” would not have been imbued with the value that it has. The value of “lovers” in comparison to friends is that the relationship it connotes seems stronger, more passionate; against soul mates “lovers” seems to imply a less serious relationship that emphasizes sexual chemistry. Words do not stand for pre-existing concepts. When I use a word to signify “something when I have in mind the associating of a sound-image with a concept...“as I did with lovers for the male and female in the image...“I am making a statement that may suggest what actually happens, but by no means am I expressing the linguistic fact in its essence and fullness” (68). It is possible to manipulate and take advantage of the fact that individual expressions never completely capture the concept and that these varied interpretations and expressions are often interchangeable.

I employed the words that I did because there was a predatory commercialness to the image. Everything is perfect and shiny and new and clean--'Hallmark' happiness. The man wears a ring on his left hand, a symbol of marriage and eternity and security. His arms are wrapped around the female's waist; he is the protector of the weaker sex. I saw irony and perversity in this embrace. It is too phony and stereotypical. To me it seemed like he was exerting his force of ownership; objectifying the woman—mine, mine, mine—almost to the point of consuming her. I also thought the idea of consuming her echoed nicely of consumerism, commenting again on the commercial emptiness of the image. I used signifiers such as fresh, young, and tender because these concepts seem to be the ones aimed at by a commercial image especially one representing the ideal of “young” love. Again by comparing the terms with ones that stand in opposition the reason for my word choice becomes clearer. The image would be entirely different and definitely not as resoundingly commercial had the “lovers” or the “greens” been old, withered, and rotten. In the concluding sentence of my word picture, I exaggeratedly compared the male in the picture to a vampire and a dog. I wanted to comment on the aspects of the image that sickened me--namely the commercialization of love and youth and the sexist, stereotypical representation of gender roles. The comparison works because these signifiers though they are worlds away from “lover” and “husband” still conjure up aspects of the signified image. The male is ogling her neck as a vampire might do, he also seems to be carnally inhaling her scent as a dog might. The terms vampire and dog connote an entirely new set of meanings and attitudes. In using these words I am assigning a a new and different value to the symbols that this image represents. The patriarchal, consumerist message of the image is not innocent, healthy, fresh or ideal. In my opinion it is blood-thirsty, beastly, uncivilized and dangerous. The exchange of the signifiers from “lover” to “husband” to “vampire” to “dog” communicates my distaste for the politics behind this image.

Can Literature Express Immutable Truths about Human Nature?

In the introduction to the book that I am currently reading, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, Peter Washington writes, “Calvino concluded that, although belief in the power of literature to promulgate a particular political doctrine was as deluded as the conventional view that literature expresses immutable truths of human nature, the writer still has legitimate political roles” (Calvino xiii). This opinion, that literature does not express humanity's immutable truths stands in stark contrast to the ideology of the American New Critics. By informing “the study of literature with a concern for traditional religious and aesthetic values of a kind being displaced by science,” New Critics were able to advance their own “values of Christian theology and idealist aesthetics” (Rivkin 6). Calvino has been able to define a social and/or political responsibility for the writer without relying upon “the idea that universal truth is available through art of a kind that is not determined by material social and historical circumstances” (Rivkin 6). A writer can be the voice for those who are “inarticulate.” “By presenting possible worlds, he can remind us that there are alternatives to the present order of reality. Most important of all, he can practise the negative but essential virtue of encouraging his readers to take nothing on trust” (Calvino xiii).