And the Grand Prize is…This Beeyootiful Goat!

The ancient Greeks looked forward to a semi-annual festival (spring and fall) in honor of the god Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of fertility, wine, and harvest. His symbol was a goat. I imagine that a celebration of wine, fertility, and harvest was not exactly like our modern county fair. It was more likely akin to Woodstock. There is some speculation that at least some of them drank wine laced with LSD.

One of the more civilized activities at these festivals was a poetry contest. This was not like our modern- day poetry slam, but a presentation of stage plays (written as poetry) put on by a group of writers. Each writer was sponsored by a local big wig. The poet had to present three tragedies and one “satyr play,” sort of like vaudeville, I guess to lighten the atmosphere after five or six hours of pain and grief. The plays were observed by a panel of judges and the winner (not the writer, but the sponsor—even back then writers never got any respect—would be given the prize of goat. The word tragedy in Greek means “goat story.”

Aristotle was a big fan of these contests and probably participated in the judging.

No one is sure why he wrote Poetics. It may have been a textbook for his Lyceum, a precursor to the modern university. It may have been a guide for judges for the festival, or he may have just been pissed that his home boy Sophocles only came in second for his play Oedipus.

At any rate Poetics, over two thousand years after it was written, is one of the most referenced works on the idea of story structure. It is the reason many modern stories are broken up into three acts, though that is a misunderstanding of Aristotle’s theory. What follows is an outline of Aristotle’s ideas, based on his book Poetics, and how it related to Aristotle’s favorite play, the aforementioned Oedipus. There will be blood (and spoilers).

Aristotle believed tragedy should be an imitation of real life. It must contain a plot i.e., a cause-and -effect trajectory. He believed the purpose of story was to create emotional release in the experiencer, what he called catharsis. He said that the plot must have a beginning, middle and end. He did NOT call this three acts. This was a later interpretation by a Frenchman in the 19th century.

His ideal plot included a backstory where a problem was created for the protagonist, which Aristotle called “tying the knot.” An inciting Incident sets the story off on a cause-and-effect trajectory leading to a climax, then a resolution as the “knot” is unraveled.

Since this is a tragedy, there must be some kind of suffering going on at the beginning of the story. In Oedipus, there is a plague on the land and the story begins with the peasants begging the king to do something about it.

Aristotle says the hero must be a man of high moral character, and we learn this when Oedipus comes out of his castle and tells the peasants he is aware of the plague and is already on it. In fact, he has sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to the soothsayer to find out what to do. (Soothsayers were popular in Greek plays and did not interfere with the realism, because in ancient Greece, they were a thing.) His brother-in-law returns and says that the problem is that somebody killed king Laius, the previous king. When the murderer is found and brought to justice, the plague will be lifted.

This is the inciting incident that gets the plot underway. The knot has been tied in the form of the plague and the mystery. This leads to Oedipus’ first bad decision. Aristotle had a word for bad decisions: Hamartia It is an archery term meaning to miss the mark. This is one of the Aristotle’s plot conventions. Hamartia occurs when the character makes a decision that turns out to be the wrong decision resulting in bad consequences. This plot convention is still popular today and is the meat and potatoes of many horror stories.

Oedipus decides to get to the bottom of the murder to end the plague. There begins a series of revelations and reversals, which are also part of Aristotle’s theory. Oedipus summons the blind prophet, Tiresias to find out if he knows anything. Tiresias stuns Oedipus by telling him that he is the murderer(reversal). Oedipus says the man is crazy and sends him away, but before he leaves, the prophet hints at an incestuous marriage, future blindness, infamy and wandering (a little foreshadowing always helps keep the people in their seats).

Next Oedipus asks his wife Jocasta what he should do. She tells him to pay the soothsayer no mind. She points out that a prophet once told her that her son would kill his father. This couldn’t be true, because she left her baby to die in the woods, and Laius was killed by a bunch of robbers.

Oedipus becomes distressed because just before he came to Thebes, he killed a man who resembled Laius at a crossroads (more complications, and a revelation.) He commits another hamartia by deciding to send for the only witness to the murder, a shepherd. Oedipus reveals that while at his home in Corinth, an oracle once told him he would one day kill his father and marry his mother. This is why he left Corinth and came to Thebes. (more revelation). Once again, his wife tells him not to worry about it.

A messenger arrives with another revelation: His father, king of Corinth has died of old age. (reversal) Jocasta has a “see, I told you so” moment. This is obviously proof that the prophesy is false.

In a stunning reversal, the messenger, trying to cheer Oedipus up, says not to worry. The king and queen of Corinth were not his real parents. (A this point the orchestra, if there was one, would go “dum dum dum!”) He says he gave Oedipus to another couple when a shepherd found the baby Oedipus abandoned in the woods.

In another classic hamartia, Oedipus decides to track down the shepherd and get to the truth. Jocasta freaks and runs away into the palace overcome with fear and grief. (And Aristotle hopes the audience experiences fear and pity at this point.)

The shepherd arrives and must be threatened with death before revealing Oedipus is actually the son of —wait for it—Laius and Jocasta. The prophecy is true Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother (and he knot is unraveled).

Agonized, Oedipus runs into the castle to find is wife/mother has killed herself. He takes the pins from her gown and puts out his eyes. As the play ends, the once king awaits his banishment from the kingdom as the audience experience their catharsis, and one assumes the plague is lifted.

Aristotle also wrote a book on comedy that has been lost to history. Who knows how comedic stories would be different had it survived? 

In our next installment we will look at probably the most misunderstood story trope, Feytag’s Pyramid.

Happy writing!