Heightened Emotional Moments:
Sophocles used heightened emotional moments to create an emotional response from his audience in his plays. For my comparison journal I am comparing Oedipus the King to 1984.
Sophocles greatly heighten the emotion of Oedipus' situation when the former king of Thebes finds out that his mother has hung herself in response to finding the whole messy "killed his own dad, slept with his mom" situation. Oedipus responds by ripping out his eyes. Pretty nasty huh? Well that is what Sophocles was going for. He wanted the audience to be so shocked by this disgusting unthinkable response that they would pick up on the emotions of the situation purely because of how dire the actions are. This is often a technique (shock and awe) used on modern television and movies, taking advantage of the fact that the audience watches what is happening and does not just read it.
Conversely, in novels, because you cannot actually see what is happening, authors depend on the words used and the pace of the text to dictate emotion in the situation. This is shown in 1984 where in the emotional moments George Orwell does not use shock and awe but rather a pre-established knowledge of what it completely unacceptable to the government. He also heightens the emotion of the situation by speeding up the rhythm and pace of the text, so the reader not only feels like they are reading fast, but they are reading fast.
No comments:
Post a Comment