Word: tragic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Playwright Rose has his documents well in hand), it weakens the drama. The narrator concedes, almost offhandedly, that the jury rendered its verdict in good faith; but after all the blatant hostility of the judge and prosecution-and, seemingly, of society itself-the play admits no possibility of tragic error, only of deliberate malevolence...
...Third Act. The rebirth of Manichaeism can be seen in the theater. Modern tragedy attaches "a very dubious quality of worthlessness, threat, evil, absurdity, to the whole world of situation and existence . . . How often in our generation have we seen the tragic protagonist who is cursed by the necessity of walking, victim and innocent, through an insane world. We need only recall such plays as Sherwood's Idiot's Delight, Paul Green's Johnny Johnston, or Anderson's Key Largo and Winterset, while Sartre gave a definitive formulation, in theory and on the stage...
Modern tragedy is guilty of another heresy as well-the Pelagian idea* of salvation as strictly a do-it-yourself project. This is evident in the modern tragic hero's tendency to rise above his fate, bloody but unbowed, whereas the traditional tragic hero was reduced at the close to "the very last point of human finitude and helplessness." Today's "attempts at tragedy have abandoned this finite image for a new Pelagian tactic, for a new type of third act, the third act of the power and the exclamation point." Society & Ritual. Similarly, too many people turn...
...Snow sees ignorance and disdain in both camps, but it is plain that he puts heavier blame on the traditional side. "The scientists have the future in their bones: the traditional culture responds by wishing the future did not exist." The literary intellectuals, particularly, tend to talk about the tragic human condition, and such talk infuriates Snow. The individual's condition may be tragic. Snow admits ("Each of us is solitary: each of us dies alone''), but that is no reason why the "social condition" must be tragic, too. For science, after all, promises that...
...Departures. In his first 24 hours in office, Huh commanded less public attention in Korea than the final, tragic act of Rhee's fall from power. Early in the week, fearful of the mob fury that kept their Seoul home under constant siege, Lee Ki Poong and his family had taken refuge in the heavily guarded presidential compound. There, crammed into a single room with his wife and two sons, Lee sought vainly for a way of escaping the net that was closing in on him. To a close friend Lee confided: "Rhee has ordered me to resign...