Hi Y10
Right, a few things in this post
then. Some general advice, comparative
points, a little bit on tragedy and an example.
The most common errors:
Be specific about the emotion
(love and hate are both emotions).
Err. Hello? Mary Shelley... Shakespeare.
If you write about the characters, you write as if they are real and this
limits your analysis. Author's names should be littered throughout your essay.
Upgrade your topic sentences.
Focus on the quotation. (Groan!)
Pick and word out and analyse it. (10%
of your GCSE is this alone.)
Link your context to the quotation
precisely.
Don’t say very. It’s the
‘nice’ of analysis.
Romantics. Romanticism. Capital letter please
(otherwise, you’re talking more red roses and candlight!)
Sweeping statements. Much better to say: I could be
seen. This suggests. This connotes.
If one more person writes constantly,
I might just give it all up...
Comparative elements
•
Pathetic Fallacy
•
Settings
•
The Gothic
•
Voices – Soliloquy and Narrative voice
•
Imagery
•
Tragic structure
•
Recurring Motifs
•
Religious beliefs/Christianity/ Biblical language/Paradise Lost
•
Hallucinations
•
Character physical reactions and manifestations of fear
•
Supernatural
•
Consequences of actions
•
‘Vaulting ambition’
•
Rhetoric ( Rhetorical questions, balanced phrases that becomes
fragmented)
•
Natural world/ order
•
Babies, innocence , new born, corrupted by man
Tragedy
A tragedy is a drama or literary
work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow,
especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to
cope with unfavourable circumstances (from dictionary.com). You can see how we
can apply this to our texts.
A classic tragedy (Aristotle’s Poetics)
has a number of common features.
Firstly, you have a hero. Their status is established as
high (been better to see higher status fall from Ancient Greece to Closer
magazine...) Don’t get confused with hero – it doesn’t mean good. This
character has hubris; essentially,
they are arrogant. They also have a fatal flaw that leads to their downfall;
this is called hamartia. They
realise this flaw has caused great suffering, anagnorisis, but it’s too late as death is inevitable. Often this is
the turning point, peripetia, that
leads the play to its tragic denouement, but not always so. Through this, pity
and fear are provoked in the audience until we come to the catharsis where we are purified by the play that we have seen. We
leave better people!
There are some other points, like
the three unities and a cart to wheel dead bodies off, but this is the basic structure.
A (usually noble) hero is arrogant and has some flaw that makes them do
something awful. This causes their downfall and they realise this too late and
die probably with other people.
You should be able to see how you
can relate this to the texts. Is Frankenstein a tragic novel? It’s a good point
of comparison, but very much an extension and not something you need to worry
about.
Example paragraph.
Shakespeare uses classical
references to show the intensity of Macbeth’s remorse and this illustrates his
desire to be King as damaging from the start. As soon as Macbeth has murdered
Duncan, Shakespeare shows his language is regretful: ‘Will all great Neptune's
ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand?’ The immediacy of Macbeth’s
guilt and regret is made apparent with a direct link to the metaphor of having
blood on your hands. This metaphor is repeated throughout the play as Lady
Macbeth sees an immovable ‘spot’ on her hand and, when Macbeth’s downfall is imminent later in the play, McDuff says
that ‘[Macbeth’s] secret murders [are]sticking on his hands’. Here, Shakespeare
shows the tragic outcome as inevitable because Macbeth will not be able to wash
his hands clean and he seems to know that this will end in his own death. Furthermore,
the classical reference to ‘Neptune’ conveys a sense of prayer to the language
and the rhetorical question accentuates the intensity of his fear. It also gives a hyperbolic exclamation of
Macbeth’s remorse as the water will literally be able to wash his hands. As
Neptune is the God of the sea, known to the Jacobean audience, not the
Christian god the audience would have also viewed this with suspicion as it was
an intensely religious time; Shakespeare uses this reference to show how Macbeth
has also gone against the Christian god by going against the Divine Right of
Kings and this places him alongside the evil witches. His appeal to ‘Neptune’ shows
how far ‘Brave Macbeth’ has fallen; Shakespeare shows how this outrageous sin
will ‘stick’ as such a blasphemous act can only result in a gruesome demise and
the character dramatically shows confusion and horror at this prospect.
As ever, let me know if you need
anything.
Ms
