Dear Henry:
For Freud, Oedipus is so satisfying because he does what we wish to do primordially, kill our fathers and sexually possess our mothers. What is "catharted", so to speak, are the forbidden wishes that are vicariously gratified by the drama.
For me, I do think of tragedy as redemptive, in the sense that great tragedies can affirm the value of human life in the face of its greatest challenge, the undeserved fall of our noblest fictional figures. We admire their authenticity and resoluteness, despite the fact that these virtues are precisely what lead to their tragic destruction.
"For beauty is the beginning of terror we are still able to bear, and why we love it so is because it so serenely disdains to destroy us" Rilke's First Duino Elegy
Daniel Shaw
Professor of Philosophy and Film
Lock Haven University
Managing Editor, Film and Philosophy
website: www.lhup.edu/dshaw
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