Sample essay 3

'Tragedies portray societies which are caught between conflicting value systems.' Discuss with reference to one or more plays.

This essay was classified as being at the upper end of the third class (3).

'Tragedies portray societies which are caught between conflicting value systems.' Discuss with reference to one or more plays.

Conflicting value systems are always around, especially where death is involved. So in the tragedies of Everyman, Doctor Faustus and Hamlet there are many conflicts to face. These include personal moral conflicts with individual characters of the plays and also opposing values between the different characters in the play.. Conflicting value systems may even stretch to how the audience interprets the play and the beliefs and culture at the time.

In Everyman, we can see that the character 'Everyman' faces a moral dilemma as God summons Everyman by offering Death to take him as his own. This creates to conflicting value systems. One is whether Everyman should go with Death.

O wretched caitiff, whither shall I flee
that I might escape this endless sorrow? (l.171-2)

Here Everyman is questioning whether or not he should go with Death. He is finding it very difficult to come to a decision in his mind. The play, Everyman is about whether he will make the right decisions.

The other question is with Everymans' friends. Should they go with Everyman?

That is matter indeed. Promise is duty;
But and I should take such a voyage on me,
I know it well, it should be to my pain;
Also it maketh me afeared certain. (l.248-9)

Here Fellowship declines from taking part in Everymans' journey, though he feels ashamed and weak to do so. Kindred, Goods, Knowledge, Confession, Beauty, Strength, Discretion and Five-wits also decline to go with Everyman, after facing a personal moral conflict.

The whole of Everyman consists of dramatic conflict and abstract argument as Everyman struggles for his soul. This is called Psycho Machia. This means that because of all of the conflicting value systems, Everyman has to remain strong in the mind in order to make the right decisions.

There are inner moral dilemmas for all of the characters involved, as each of them have to fight with their conscience in order to make the right decisions.

We can also find conflicting values in the religion of the play. Everyman is a Christian play in which God is seen as manipulative and vengeful, though heaven is seen as a good place.

Now shalt thou into the heavenly sphere,
Unto which all ye shall come
That liveth well before the day of doom. (l.899-901)

This alone shows a conflicting value within the play. Also, people of other religions would like to see God as a different figure and they may not believe in Heaven and a Hell. A Catholic would be able to do many bad deeds, yet would still be allowed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven if he had repented of his sins, and so because of this the audience could see the whole play as having conflicting value systems. In fact the whole audience could be in conflict.

The play shows two different value systems within the moral argument. Everyman doesn't always make the right choices, after facing conflicting dilemmas with his mind. Towards the end of the play he feels weak and is ready to give up, he even talks about sinning.

Alas I am so faint I may not stand;
My limbs under me doth fold.
Friends let us not turn again to this land,
Not for all the worlds gold;
For into this cave I must creep
And turn to earth, and there to sleep. (l.788-793)

The play also shows the bad results of when someone is tempted. Here (above) Everyman loses one of his qualities, 'beauty', whom he was addressing. However, Everyman, the play, also shows another side for when someone makes the right choices and is not tempted by the devil. For instance Everyman finally goes to heaven and is saved.

And save me from the fiends boast,
That I may appear with that blessed host
That shall be saved at the day of doom. (l.883-5)

Even the characters have conflicting value systems. For instance ,Vice is a very complex theatrical character. He tells the audience that he is wicked and that he is a harmful influence in the play. Yet he is always honest. So even his character is not a typical representation of evil and therefore is experiencing conflicting personality traits.

The good and bad characters in the play are also facing conflicts against each other. e.g. Good Deeds.

Though Everyman is a good character, as he nears the grave, his qualities disappear from him. (Gillie, 1977, p.41)

Dr Faustus, another moral tragedy faced many of the same conflicting value systems as Everyman, however, with much more temptation from the seven deadly sins, Faustus finds it much more difficult to be moral. Faustus gets into a moral conflict with his mind, and the good and bad angels are symbols of this.

O Faustus, lay that damned book aside. (I.i.68)

The Good angel encourages Faustus to remain good.

If thou repent, devils will tear thee in pieces. (II.ii.82)

The bad angel tries to persuade Faustus not to do the right thing. The society around Dr Faustus is putting him in the middle of a moral conflict by telling him what to do.

Mephistopheles also creates conflict by doing whatever Faustus asks (Jump, 1962). This means that Dr Faustus is able to commit any sin that he wants. The people in the society around him give him knowledge of what will happen to him if he does not repent, yet he won't repent through fear of punishment. So even though Dr Faustus turns to worldly delights to put off confrontation of the real problem, the problem is always there. This means that the conflict in Dr Faustus mind hasn't gone away, he is just trying to forget that he has a dilemma.

The society in which Dr Faustus lives is split into two with people telling him different things. The figure of the old man shows that there is still a chance for Dr Faustus to repent and to be saved. Here is a quote showing that there are two sides of an argument in Dr Faustus:

It is also thoroughly Renaissance in its treatment: the conflict of choice is made convincing as it would not have been in a medieval play (Wynne-Davis, 1989, p.463)

This quote again shows that there were two sides in Dr Faustus and this made it hard for him to make the right decisions. For example, Beelzebub, the seven deadly sins, Mephistopheles and Helen of Troy all lead to Dr Faustus being damned.

Again, as in Everyman, the conflict of all of the individual characters and the moral conflict between them is not the only conflict that goes on in this morality play. There are also conflicts between audience interpretation. For instance, the audience at the time of Dr Faustus was continually changing their religion as the king kept swapping the countries beliefs from Catholic to Protestant and back again and again. Because of this it often depended on whether the audience were Catholic or not as to whether Dr Faustus was damned. If the audience was Catholic, then they believe that Dr Faustus would not have been damned, but if the audience was Protestant, they believed that Dr Faustus wouldn't have constant chances to repent and would most certainly be damned. Therefore there could be conflict between the audiences as they believe that two different things would have happened to Faustus. Catholics would believe that Faustus could not be damned, therefore, the rightful ending to the play relies on Christian ideology as Faustus was eventually sentenced to eternal damnation.

Hamlet, another tragedy has many conflicting values. Hamlet is often forced to think about his actions because of the society around him. In the play, Hamlet is placed in an impossible situation. He faces moral conflicts and dilemmas in his own mind.

In his life, Hamlet plays many roles. We can think of him as an author, director and protagonist. Hamlet has two parts to his character and they are conflicting. One is that one aspect of his character is responsible for his destruction and this is why Hamlet faces a dilemma. Hamlet's dilemma is that on one part he loves his mother and doesn't want to offend her, and if she loves Claudius he doesn't want to hurt her, but on the other part he knows that Claudius killed his father. Hamlet even has conflicts trying to persuade his mother that Claudius is the murderer, but she does not want to believe him, she thinks that Hamlet is just jealous and angry because she married so soon after his fathers death. Hamlet again faces conflict in that he did not want to kill Claudius as he didn't want to commit a sin, he is also afraid of going to hell instead of heaven, yet he also wants justice to be done. Hamlet is torn between doing what he thinks is right and revenging his fathers killer.

To be or not to be, that is the question,
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer (III.i.66-7)

This soliloquy shows that Hamlet faces a moral dilemma and is very worried about doing the right thing. This is made even harder for Hamlet, because the ghost of his father is asking him to kill Claudius, Hamlet himself is afraid of death and so doesn't want to kill himself to escape because he is scared.

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. (I.v.31)

Hamlet even goes to the point of pretending that he is mad to try and escape his conscience. He is hoping that when he kills Claudius, everyone would think that he was mad and wouldn't think of him as badly. He is also hoping that he can be forgiven.

Hamlet finally kills himself to flee from the conflicting value systems that are around him. For example, the ghost of his father is telling him what to do and so is his mother. He also feels guilty about killing Polonius.

Finally he decides to rid himself of the moral conflict that is going on in his head.

Heaven make me free of it. (V.ii.273)

So as you can see, Tragedies have conflicts for many reasons. This does not necessarily mean that the conflict is in society, as more often than not it is a persons own personal conflict, often between right and wrong, as shown in these morality plays. However, societies make humans take actions that they might not have taken otherwise. There are many other dilemmas going on as well, the moral dilemmas in all three plays lead the characters to sort out their conflicting opinions, they never really know what to do for the best, this is when society often causes conflict by taking different sides of the argument.

The tragedy , however, does not mean that evil always wins out. Sometimes good does win over evil.

 

Bibliography

Anonymous Everyman in ed. Worthen, WB (1996) The Harcourt Brace Anthology of Drama, 2nd edn, Texas: Harcourt Brace

Gillie, C (1977) Longman Companion to English Literature, London: Longman

Jump, J (1962) Introduction to Marlowe, Christopher Doctor Faustus, Kent: Methuen

Marlowe, Christopher Doctor Faustus in ed. Worthen, WB (1996) The Harcourt Brace Anthology of Drama, 2nd edn, Texas: Harcourt Brace

Shakespeare, William Hamlet in ed. Worthen, WB (1996) The Harcourt Brace Anthology of Drama, 2nd edn, Texas: Harcourt Brace

Wynne-Davis, Marion (1989) The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, London: Bloomsbury

Click here to see the tutor's comments on this essay

Click here to go back to the list of sample essays