Tragedy Journal 11 (Blood Wedding Act 3)

Act 3 of Blood Wedding contains many scenes with minor characters that act as detached spectators to the main events that are occuring in the play. This can be compared to Sophocles' Oedipus, which contains a chorus which is more detached from the rest of the play. Both of these groups express pity for the main tragic character in the play.

The group of woodcutters in Blood Wedding could represent a small chorus in a Greek tragedy, they express pity for the eloping couple:

SECOND WOODCUTTER. They should leave them alone.
FIRST WOODCUTTER. The world is wide - everyone can live in it.
THIRD WOODCUTTER. But they will kill them.
SECOND WOODCUTTER. You must follow your heart. They did well to run away. (Lorca 3.1)

Federico Garcia Lorca utilizes these minor characters to offer feedback about the controversial actions of Leonardo and the Bride. Soceital expectations are being questioned, and Lorca is supporting them through these detached characters. Although Lorca does express the positives of individuality in this passage, he still talks about the hopelessness of going against the grain of society, "But they will kill them".

Sophocles uses a chorus instead of minor characters, and he does make the purpose of the chorus slightly different from Lorca. The chorus plays a very big role in Oedipus, not only to pity Oedipus but also to act as a response to label Oedipus as a tragic hero, "But whether a mere man can know the truth, whether a seer can fathom more than I - there is no test, no certain proof [...] No, not till I see these charges proved will I side with his accusers. [...] saw with our own eyes his skill, his brilliant triumph - [...] Never will I convict my king, never in my heart" (Sophocles 563-572). Because of the chorus's admiration for Oedipus, it accentuates his downfall. Even so, the chorus is shaken by this prophecy that Tiresias delivers. Sophocles mainly focuses on how the chorus is used to heighten the drama in the play instead of delivering a certain opinion or message.

Tragedy Journal 10 (Blood Wedding Act 2)

Prompt: Personal convictions and shared beliefs, the private and the public life, sometimes seem at odds in the modern world. How did you find your chosen works touched on this conflict, and with what effect?



The play Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca offers several examples of these conflicts. Lorca shows this through private conversations between characters, for example the Bridegroom's mother forces herself to hold back her beliefs about her daughter in-law's family, "I ache down to the end of my veins! On all their faces, I see nothing but the hand that killed what was mine. [...] I am mad - from not having shouted out everything I needed to. I have a scream in my throat - always there - that I have to choke back and hide under my shawl. But they carry off the dead and you must keep silent. Or people will criticize" (Lorca 2.2). Even though the mother has a previous history with the other feuding family, she still holds back because of not only the bride's father advising her to, but also because of societal expectations of her not bringing up the subject during the wedding. (this ends up not working since the Bride elopes with Leonardo, and the Mother separates the guests into their respective feuding sides). Lorca seems to express a feeling of discontent when the truth is not revealed, but it seems to be also necessary to hide the truth until it is the appropriate time.



Ibsen demonstrates a similar idea through his play the Wild Duck, also with two families who instead have tensions between them due to financial issues.

GINA. Well, I think you ought to sleep on it first, anyway.

GREGERS. You're not very anxious to have me in the house, Mrs. Ekdal. [...]

HJALMAR. Yes, Gina, this is really peculiar of you. (Ibsen Act 2)

Gina herself is restricted similarly to the Mother in Blood Wedding, but instead is quieted by her husband, another male figure in the play. The comparison between the public views and private views are evident in Ibsen's plot which leads to a private conversation with Hjalmar and Gina about the hidden tensions between families. The truth of Gina's relationship with Werle results in the destruction of Hjalmar, and because of her personal motives to keep the family united clashed with Hjalmar's expectations of truth in their marraige, Ibsen attempts to express a sarcastic view on revealing the truth in everything.

Tragedy Journal 9 (Blood Wedding Act 1)

Discussion on Literary Topics: Since I noticed that Federico Garcia Lorca emphasizes women's roles in society through marriage in his play Blood Wedding, I thought I should analyze how he shows their roles...

In Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca, the first scene opens with a mother and her son who is planning to marry. The mother expresses a feeling of hopelessness through the symbol of knives, "If I lived a hundred years, I would talk of nothing else! First, your father. To me he smelled like carnations, and I enjoyed him only three short years. Then your brother. Is it fair? How can it be that something as small as a pistol or a knife can destroy a man who is like a bull? I'll never be quiet. The months go by, and the desperation stings my eyes and the very tips of my hair!" (Lorca 1.1). The woman role in Lorca's tragedy is one of subservience but still based on family hierarchies. One can see this through the influence of the bridegroom's mother and the contrasting influence of the bride:

MOTHER. You better hoe the vines over by the little mill. You've been
neglecting them.

BRIDEGROOM. Whatever you say. (Lorca 1.1)

Because of the mother's high hierarchical status as the remaining parent of the family, she still takes precedence over some decisions that her son makes. This can be easily contrasted to the future bride:

(The BRIDE enters, her hands modestly at her sides, her head
lowered) [...]

MOTHER. No... Just that you all live. Just that! Live!

BRIDE. I will know my duty. (Lorca 1.2)

The detailed stage directions help the reader understand the subservient role of women being portrayed by Lorca. This role is demonstrated in front of a "public" audience i.e. the bride's father and mother-in-law. The bride's real emotions are revealed when only she and the maid are on stage:

MAID. For heaven's sake! All right. you're acting like you don't want to get
married.

BRIDE. (Biting her hand in rage) Oh!

MAID.
Child! My dear! What's the matter with you? Are you sorry you're giving up the
life of a queen? (Lorca 1.2)

This hidden rebelliousness against the society's views gives the impression that Lorca is attempting to show how societal standards are inevitably surpassed especially considering the roles of women. Having that freedom of not being married is one that the Maid describes as the "life of a queen" (Lorca 1.2).

Tracking Journal 1

I am tracking the comparisons between the upper and lower classes in each play. In Oedipus, the difference is clear between the royalty compared to the common people. Although the general population worships both king and god alike, they witness the fall of Oedipus and therefore witness the fall of hubris and powerful people. Also because of Oedipus' blindness towards truth and how even a sheperd has more insight than him on his own life helps express the downfall of the upper class and the rise of the lower class.

Although there is not much of a distinction between higher and lower class in Wild Duck by Ibsen, there is a detailed portrayal of the middle/lower class family in the Ekdals. Because of their debts with Werle, Hjalmar always attempts to be dignified about what he owes and how he will pay the money back. However this sense of dignity goes too far when Hjalmar promises he will pay back all of the family's debts on the account of mainly the invention that he cannot even describe. (he is just awaiting the inspiration for it).

Tragedy Journal 8 (Wild Duck Act 5)

Narrative Structure: How important/effective is the ending? Has everything been revealed by the end or are there unanswered questions? Does this matter?


The ending of Wild Duck by Ibsen is very important to the drama as a whole. It acts as the end of the climax in the play through Hedvig's suicide. Most everything has been revealed by the end mainly through Hjalmar's realizations. For instance, after storming out of the house, Hjalmar returns to his home at first looking to pack his bags and make his final preparations for his departure, but instead realizes that he still requires the care of his wife Gina, through homely items like butter and coffee, "Could I - without being annoyed by anybody - anybody at all - put up in the living room for just a day or two?" (208-209). Hjalmar even expresses his shame after reluctantly gluing back Werle's letter of endorsement, "(Cutting and pasting.) Far be it from me to take liberties with another's property - least of all, a penniless old man's." (209). All of these actions play into the fall of the tragic hero, Hjalmar.

To mention the actual ending of the end of this Act, there is a conversation between Relling and Gregers, both rivals from the Hoidal works, where both argue on whether Hjalmar should still be idolatrized in the sad death of his daughter, "RELLING Oh, life would be good in spite of all, if we only could have some peace from these damned shysters who come badgering us poor people with their 'summons to the ideal'" (5.216). Relling criticizes a societal perspective of idealism that Gregers maintains through the play until the very end. This is also another realization that Gregers failed to peacefully unite the Ekdal family even through he proselytized endlessly to Hjalmar about telling the truth and its dignity in human life.

Tragedy Journal 7 (Wild Duck Act 4)

Readers are attracted to moments of intensity in a writer's work. By what means and with what effect have writers in your study offered heightened emotional moments designed to arrest the reader's attention?

Scandal and affairs are commonly used to heighten emotions in relationships. In Act Four of the Wild Duck, Hjalmar has discovered that his wife Gina has hidden a previous relationship with Werle, "GINA. Well, you might as well know it all. He didn't give up till he had his way. HJALMAR. (with a clap of his hands). And this is the mother of my child! How could you keep that hidden from me!" (Ibsen 183). The fact that Gina has had this previous relationship with an enemy of the Ekdal family drives the emotions deep into Hjalmar. This accentuates the motif of the wild duck and how the Ekdal family represents a wounded wild duck.

In Oedipus, the scandal of Oedipus marrying his mother and bedding down with her is enough to send the traditional audiences in Greece reeling. Sophocles tries to make this realization of the scandal very dramatic, "O god - All come true, all burst to light! O light - now let me look my last on you! I stand revealed at last - cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands!" (Sophocles 1306-1310). Both characters realize their scandals in different ways, Oedipus brings the burden upon himself, whereas Hjalmar attempts to put the blame on his wife Gina, "it'll be your past, Gina, that killed it" (Ibsen 184).

Tragedy Journal 6 (Wild Duck Act 3)

"Visual action can be as important on the stage as speech."

From the works that I have studied, I believe that this statement is true. Sophocles' Oedipus only occasionally uses stage directions, while Ibsen's Wild Duck makes stage directions pronounced and detailed, allowing script readers to understand more fully the physical actions that the characters carry out. Ibsen uses more detailed stage directions in order to clarify the characters' emotions. Also because of the time that Ibsen wrote the play, it fits the context of modernism and realism where stage directions made the actors act in a more realistic manner.

Ibsen expresses the extent of Old Ekdal's age in these stage directions "(Old Ekdal enters from his room, without his pipe, but with his old military cap on his head; his walk is a bit unsteady)" (Ibsen 149). "(Ekdal stumbles, muttering, over to the sofa." (Ibsen 149). These stage directions make it easier to see what the playwright is attempting to express.

Sophocles expresses very little of the characters through his stage directions as demonstrated in this passage, "Children, where are you? Here come quickly - Groping for ANTIGONE and ISMENE, who approach their father cautiously, then embrace him" (Sophocles 1620-1621). Sophocles only explains what is happening, without providing much detail about character's facial expressions or actions. Because of the extent of which the characters express their emotions through dialogue, Sophocles allows some interpretation to be made by the actor through the words in the script instead of the stage directions.