final paper

What I've Learned:

The tragic sense of life

Throughout the semester we have discussed a myriad of interesting topics and ideas. Each has had it's own impact on how I viewed literature and the world around me. Our discussions on dreams and the universal unconscious were fascinating, drawing me into a world I otherwise may not have entered. I will take what we have learned about archetypes and use it to interpret the nature of characters as well as the people around me. The central theme of “retellings” made me look at the stories I hear every day, and have heard all my life, in a new light. Everything we discussed I will carry with me into my future in literature and storytelling. One topic however, strikes the core of humanity and that is the tragic sense of life. No topic we discussed applies so universally to both stories and life as the tragic sense of life.

The tragic sense of life is something that we discussed fairly frequently in class this year, perhaps because it is a common thread that runs through existence. The tragic sense of life addresses the idea that all of life is suffering. The suffering is variable, some suffering more severely than others, but it is constant and universal. Upon inspection this philosophy is very well supported, simply by looking at our own lives. As mentioned in class we are born from a comfortable closed, controlled world out into a harsh, bright and drafty universe, a universe of suffering. Growing up in the western world we have a fairly comfortable life, but it its still wrought with suffering. We want things, our parents want to make us happy, they want to be happy and the way to happiness in our part of the world is through money. So they suffer for their money, spending time away from the things and people they love to achieve wealth. They use their hard earned wealth to first cover the essentials, sustenance and shelter, then addressing the wants, the things we use to mask our suffering. When we grow old enough we take over our parent's mantle, struggling for wealth. Then we die.

In literature suffering is often ratcheted up to a whole new plane of existence. Stories like that of Job, who has everything taken from him by God as a test of faith all the way to the great space epic Star Wars wherein the robot C3PO laments to his friend R2D2 that “suffering seems to be our lot in life.” The Brothers Karamazov seems to be a study on suffering. Old Man Karamazov, fights with his son and seems generally unhappy, Ivan is passionately opposed to “the world God created” because it allows suffering, Dimitry fights bitterly with his father is caught between two women, Father Zosima and Ilyusha both suffer with illness throughout the novel and both eventually die. Dostoevsky is a master of human suffering.

Living with a future put in such bleak terms one wonders what the point is. Why go on existing when to exist is to suffer? We suffer in hate and love, in prosperity or ruin, in good health or bad so why not just take our chances on an afterlife and escape it all? The unknown prevents us from taking action. We know what we have here, even if it is only varying degrees of suffering, and that prevents us from taking a leap into the unknown. All of that aside, suffering is what makes life fun.

If we were to live a life without suffering things would get boring very quickly. If solving problems wasn't hard and rewarding, why bother doing it. If you could write a best selling novel, teach a shark sign language and climb mount everest in the same day that'd be pretty cool, but not if everyone else was doing it right along with you. Suffering is what makes life worth living because our suffering defines us. We learn from our trials and tribulations much more than we do from our successes. For example I feel much more passionate about the topic that I am writing about simply because I had to suffer to write about it. I could be turning my brain into soft goo playing video games right now but instead I am writing a paper. I will, however feel much better about the time I spent languishing over this paper than if I had spent that same time dismembering zombies in a virtual universe. Suffering makes the little victories that much sweeter but without suffering we would have no motivation. If there were no consequences for our actions, or lack of action, who's to say we'd ever get anything done.

Suffering in literature parallels suffering life, without it we would have no story to tell. If Old Man Karamazov and his sons all got along famously and never encountered a problem we wouldn't have a story at all. Suffering in literature allows us to study our own suffering from a distance, easing the pain of directly addressing our suffering by addressing the suffering of a far off character. Literature leaves it to us to bring the stories of suffering full circle and apply them to our own lives. Embracing the tragic sense of life, understanding that life is made up of suffering, allows us to live life to the fullest, despite the hard times. Those hard times define us, no one has suffered like you have and because of that you are a unique and interesting person, living a story that has never been told exactly this way before. Enjoy it despite the suffering.