Critical Analysis of Catharsis

                  As human beings one predictably looks for a palliative when hurt or struck by a tragedy. While pain and hurt is instant, and seeks immediate relief, tragedy is different as its effect is slow, brutal and long lasting.

    A person seeking relief from a tragedy would invariably look for a catharsis, which is akin to riddance of emotions.

 Catharsis happens when pent up emotions and feelings are metaphorically sluiced out by another incident or action of similar nature. The experience of catharsis is meant to make a person feel calm and refreshed.

 When personal pain is confronted by pain experienced by another person, one feels a sort of connection, and this in turn makes the personal tragedy seem less intense.

Many a time it happens that a song, a piece of poignant poetry, a film scene or watching an opera makes one weep, and the act of weeping swills out the inner turmoil.

It often feels as if something is flushing out the miasma of one’s soul.

Such an experience is the catharsis what the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322BC) speaks about in his work Poetics. He explains the exact effect an audience would have while watching a touching rendition of a drama or opera, would be a release of pent up feelings.  The effect he believes is often similar to the flow of menstrual fluid, or any reproductive material. Such an act of catharsis has the power to becalm a person after the experience of release through tears or any other way of expression.

     However, it is maintained that catharsis cannot be termed as cleansing or purification of a person’s inner being. It is more like purgation. It is the emotional breakdown, that let loose the repressed feelings stuck somewhere in the gut or chest, and brings about a kind of release, but not relief of a permanent kind.

   Catharsis was used as a purely medical term, like purging of bowels, and any drug used as a laxative was called cathartic.  Aristotle gave a different connotation to its meaning, in Poetics. He says that human soul is purged of its excessive passions, through catharsis. Since this work was largely in response to Plato’s claim that poetry makes a man hysterical and uncontrolled, Aristotle responded by saying that poetry helps a man to become less emotional, by providing a periodic and healthy outlet to their feelings.

In psychotherapy, where therapy is provided to people suffering from mental ailment and trauma, Psychoanalysts use the method of talking and expressing of emotions as catharsis.

    People suffering from deep mental trauma or grief, are provided a professionally congenial atmosphere, where they can speak about their inner turmoil while a psychoanalyst listens with uninterrupted silence and trained compassion.

Such sessions are termed as catharsis.

Catharsis is believed to be pleasurable, because it involves a feeling of astonishment, and  a state of trance where the person experiencing it while watching a tragedy, thinks that there are others who are the recipient of even greater tragedy than him.

The relief caused by such feelings is termed as catharsis.

Thus catharsis can be termed as an emptying of feelings and resolving of raging emotions by the end of it all.

       Aristotle believed that a tragedy should arouse feelings of pity and fear in a spectator in such a way as to accomplish catharsis.  By pity he meant the pity for the protagonist’s tragic fate and fear at the sight of dreadful suffering befalling the hero.

By arousing fear and pity a tragedy aims at catharsis of these and similar other feelings that subsist in a person’s heart. A tragedy provides emotional relief and the audience gets up feeling lighter and calmer after watching the play. In a way, tragedy provides nourishment to the emotional side of human nature and sort of winnows the soul aesthetically. Since experience is a natural human craving, tragedy widens the experience and enriches the scope of having more understanding of life and its ambiguities.

       In the Greek mythologies tragedy is believed to be brought on by a person’s fate, and personal flaws. No amount of prevention can let a man escape his fate. Lets take for example the two tragic plays, ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Oedipus Rex’.

In the play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus’s tragedy is something that was fated, and he couldn’t escape despite the machinations of all kind he or the people around him used.

The affirms the law of unintended forces to be at play with human kind. Whatever a person intends, the consequences are often what one doesn’t intends and the life of Oedipus Rex is the classic example of tragedy.  He comes back to his tragic fate unintentionally and falls the victim t the tragedies prophesied by the oracle.

As Aristotle says that a tragic play needs to have a beginning, middle and end; unity of time and place; a tragic hero; and a concept of catharsis.

Both the plays have these factors, though the concept of catharsis varies in both, according to the extent of their tragedies.

We will look at how the concepts of catharsis are emphasized in these two plays.

  Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the victim of his own tragic flaw, and falls prey to the consequences arising out of it. Hamlet’s tragic flaw is that he spends too much time pondering over an action before taking it.

‘To be or not to be’  (Shakespeare, Hamlet) is the famous quote that often defined him, and he could not prevent his tragic downfall due to this flaw in his character.

When he finally decides to kill Claudius, who is the killer of his father, he watches him praying and decides to wait. The next time he gets the chance he takes it, but by that time it is too late.  The concept catharsis applies here as the tragedy incorporates fear and pity both, and the purging of these emotions entails catharsis.  Claudius fears Hamlet coming to know that he had killed his father, and he believes that Hamlet would kill him for this.

He could not kill Hamlet because people loved Hamlet too much, and his killing him would have raised dangerous speculations about him.

He feels pity when he sees the ‘Mouse Trap’ and realizes that killing Hamlet’s father was a crime, and Hamlet knows about the truth behind it.

By killing Claudius, Hamlet is seeking revenge, and the act of revenge is the subconscious catharsis that he is looking for. The grief that he feels at his father’s unfair death drives him to the point of plotting to kill his uncle and his father’s killer.

  In this play Gertrude, does not express grief over her husband’s death. Her catharsis comes in the form of marrying Claudius, and in a way finding a recompense for the loss of her husband.

   Ophelia does not find catharsis, as she is torn between the conflict of loving Hamlet and hating the person who killed her father. She succumbs to her mixed feelings of pain, love and hate, and dies with the pent up emotions weighing her down.

The audience experience catharsis when Claudius is killed. As the murder came much later in the play due to Hamlet’s indecisiveness, and when the true character of Claudius as the evil king become obvious. If Hamlet had killed Claudius in the beginning when he had got his first chance then it would have come across as another son avenging his father’s death. But the catharsis occurred when the king Claudius is shown as an evil person responsible for death of others and who would continue to cause harm if allowed to live.  The revenge of Hamlet becomes a secondary thing and the killing of a malevolent man becomes the primary cause, which the audience applauds.

 Hamlet suffers from Oedipal conflicts when he sees that his mother is in an intimate relationship with the killer of his father.

 The very act of his waiting to take his revenge, killing the father of the woman he loved by mistake, and his sufferings make him into the archetypal tragic hero.

The audience feels compassion for the hero’s tragedies, and wait with him to avenge the crime done by Claudius. The end of Claudius is the catharsis, and although the ad chain of events that happen to Hamlet, throughout the play is heartrending, the audience experience catharsis when the play ends. The death of Claudius is a kind of moral triumph for Hamlet, and the audience.

  It is proclaimed that tragedy teaches endurance and perseverance in the face of calamities. It also expands the boundaries of experiences in life.

The primal feelings such as fear and pity is assuaged when a catharsis follows a tragedy.

It is obvious in the play Oedipus Rex, where these two feelings are increasingly dominant. The tragedy of Oedipus arises in the audience feelings of pity and fear, and it also deepens the understanding of human nature and human psychology of a person.

Oedipus gives vent to his feelings of sympathy by telling the priest that his heart is burdened by the sufferings of people of Thebes, and creates a comparative sympathy in the hearts of audience. When Oedipus resolves to track down the murderer of Laius, it arouses a feeling of relief in the audience.

Oedipus describes himself as “ …shedder of father’s blood, husband of mother, Godless and child of shame, begetter of brother-sons”  (Sophocles, Oedipus Rex) awakens the feeling of pity for his tragic plight and fear for the outcome of his fate. The catharsis is less here as the tragedy culminates in Oedipus blinding himself upon the news of his mother hanging herself. Here the tragedy is enormous and unrelenting. Oedipus is the victim of fate and he is believed to be putty in hands of providence.

He was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. And the catharsis was his gouging out his own eyes in sheer terror of watching the consequences of his fate.

In his own words he says, “ The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves. Fear? What should a man fear? It’s all chance. Chance rules our lives. Not a man on earth can see a day ahead, groping through the dark.  Better to live at random, best we can.”

(Sophocles, Oedipus Rex )

In this play catharsis come in many forms. The play not just arouses a feeling of pity and fear, as these are cited as the primary feelings by Aristotle, it also provides mixed feelings of irritation, relief, delight, and pleasure. These feelings are outcome of witnessing not just tragedy but human greatness along with human misery side by side.

Oedipus committed his sins unknowingly, and did his best to avert the disaster he was fate to experience. He was an innocent man, despite being proud and tyrannical. Jacosta is also an innocent woman who falls prey to her ill-fated circumstances.

There is an essential goodness in Oedipus, Jacosta and Creon, and it is pleasing to the senses. But on the other hand it is deeply saddening to watch them struggle with their tragedies, bearing it with prodigious endurance and inflicting upon themselves a punishment that is dreadful.

Oedipus is a true hero who rises to laudable heights displaying an unconquerable spirit.

He is extremely ashamed of his incestuous folly, and although he is blind and helpless there is certain imperviousness to his mind, which has a rather reassuring effect upon the audience.

The feeling of profound grief of Oedipus upon learning his tragic secrets has an equally deep effect upon the audience. It is felt and experienced by them in equal measure when he pricks his eyes with the golden brooch of Jacosta when she hangs herself after she comes to know that she had married her own son. The act of blinding himself is Oedipus’s way of atonement. It is the catharsis he is seeking for himself.

Catharsis is also developed by conjunction of stereotyped characters with unique actions.

As happens in Oedipus Rex, when he is confronted by some outrageous actions in the beginning of the play, but is suddenly emptied by the death of his mother, and his act of self-blinding.

In Hamlet, the audience does not feel the need for an apology when he kills Claudius.

In fact it becomes the point of catharsis, a great relief. Had Hamlet killed Claudius in the beginning, there would have been some sympathy for the king, but Hamlet raises to the status of hero and then kills the killer of his father. Thus providing catharsis for the audience.

The feeling of catharsis is in lesser degree in Oedipus Rex, as Oedipus is driven to devastation by his tragedies, and the act of self blinding arouses great pity and fear in the

audience but little catharsis.  The tragedy is resolved by another tragedy, the utter degradation of Oedipus ‘s life, and though the blinding is seen a retribution to a crime that Oedipus did in complete ignorance.

Perhaps it brought catharsis to Oedipus when he said,” What good were eyes to me? Nothing I could see could bring me joy.”

   For an audience the relief doesn’t come in watching Oedipus Rex; except a feeling of    fear and pity that such a tragedy could befall someone with such intensity.

The term catharsis does make sense in both the plays, though not in equal measure.

One is taken through Hamlet with a dominant feeling of pity and fear; catharsis comes in the end when the crime of Claudius is brought to justice.

    In Oedipus Rex, the overriding feeling of tragedy grips the mind of the one watching the play with an intensity that leaves little scope of seeking catharsis. Oedipus is doomed by his fate, nothing he does could avert his tragedies that await him in the end. His ill fate is driving him towards his destruction. He blinds himself as he couldn’t revert his fated tragedy, and undo the damage.

Works Cited

• Sophocles, Oedipus Rex. 429 BC.
• Bate, Jonathan and Eric Rasmussen, Complete Works by William Shakespeare. New York: Modern Library, 2007.

• Mccurdy, Harold Shakespeare- King Of Infinite Space, Hamlet Art and Practiclity.1968
• Otey, Jessica, Modern Oedipus: Incest and Authorship
• Dodds, E, On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex, Greece and Rome, 2nd , Vol.13, No.1 (Apr., 1966), pp.37-49.