Week 2 Essay: Tragedy In Ancient Mythology

In this week's reading there was a trend of many tragic endings.  Some stories in particular include: Daedalus and Icarus, The Death of Hercules, Orpheus and Eurydice, and The Death of Adonis.  Each ending consists of an unforeseen death, or death has already been integrated in the plot.  Out of all of these stories Orpheus and Eurydice was the one I found the most disheartening.  Specific elements of the story are matrimony, loss, and re-loss. Orpheus loses his wife on his wedding day when a serpent fatally bites Eurydice’s ankle.  He was a famous Greek musician, and he travels to the underworld to retrieve her.  While there he performs a song so touching, it persuaded Pluto and Persephone.  He was granted his wife, but was instructed not to look back at her until they have returned to the mortal world. On their journey back, Orpheus begins to wonder if his wife is still beside him and tries to sneak a look at her.  In the instant he turns his head, she disappears in thin air, and he is forbidden to cross the river of Styx again. This last scene received the saddest emotional response from me. One could sense that the young man was in love with his wife, so much that due to human error he lost her a second time.  

 

(Modification of Orphée ramenant Eurydice des enfers 1816
 by Jean-Baptiste-Caille Corot (1796-1875: Wiki Commons)

In each of the other readings each person's death is secondary to ignorance, or an incurable mistake in Hercules’ case. Orpheus and Eurydice were on the verge of their happily ever after, when a single snake happened to be in the right place at the right time.  I view this as misfortune, and there wasn’t anything the newlyweds could do to prevent the bite. In the other stories I feel that death was used as a lesson learned, or a transformation to a bigger plot.  Icarus and Adonis were both warned by loved ones to take care in choosing their actions, and instead of taking precaution they evidentially ended themselves with ignorant tragedy.  In the case of Hercules his death was just another epic feat of his, and in the end he was able to enter Mount Olympus and become a god.  In his story his death could initially viewed as a tragedy, but then emotions could change since he is obtaining a higher status such as immortality.