The Difference between Tragedy and the Whole Truth

The Difference between Tragic Literature  and Non-tragic Literature

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), a great literary critic, highly individualistic writer and a major modern essayist, shows the difference between tragic literature, containing partial truth and the non-tragic literature, containing whole truth, in his master-piece essay “Tragedy and the Whole Truth”. Here he also shows the superiority of the whole truth over the tragedy.  Now we are going to discuss the difference between tragedy and the whole truth in detail.

In order to know the difference between tragedy and the whole truth, we are, at first, to know what the truth is. We generally find two types of truth. First one is actual truth and another one is literary truth.

To Huxley, two and two makes four, or Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 or light travels at the rate of 187000 miles a second is the example of actual truth.

 But in literature we may not find such kind of truth. Literary truth is far different from the practical truth. After reading an incident of a literary work, it may rise in our mind “Oh it is similar to my experience, or it may have happened in my life.” 

Furthermore, to Huxley;

“Good art possesses a kind of super-truth—is more probable, more acceptable, more convincing than fact itself.”

For example, we may feel that as writer says:

“This is what I have always felt and thought, but have never been able to put clearly into words, even for myself.”

Now let us discuss the tragedy. In fact, in contrast with wholly truthful art, tragedy gives us only a partial truth. As writer remarks: 

“Tragedy is an arbitrarily isolated eddy on the surface of a vast river that flows on majestically, irresistibly, around, beneath, and to either side of it.”

In order to make a tragedy the artist must isolate a single element out of the totality of human experience.

 Huxley believes that tragedy distils its material from the whole truth and this fact gives the tragedy chemically purity which makes it quicker in its impact on the readers and gives the power of “Catharsis.” But Huxley also believes that its impact is less lasting than that of a novel, containing whole truth.

Moreover, the tragedian is not independent to depict all the incident of a character life. For example, Shakespeare could not have depicted any incident for ‘Desdemona’ like Fielding could express the scene for ‘Sophia’ with the fall form her horse.

 On the other hand, the whole truth deals with the whole part of human life. Sometimes it may express tragic event but it does not become so called ‘tragedy’.

Huxley’s conception of the whole truth can best be understood by the reference to Homer. He refers to an incident in the “Odyssey” in which Odysseus, the hero, loses some of his fellow-sailors who are devoured by the monster Scylla before their very eyes. They had nothing to do but cook at helplessly.

 Homer does not treat this incident tragically, but prefers to tell the whole truth. So we, after wards, see that the sailors shed tears in the memory of their departed friends only after they have enjoyed an expertly cooked supper, and which they mourn for their friends they gently fall off into sleep. If a tragic writer have wrote this incident, he would have concentrated on the mourning only, and would not have referred either to meal or to mourners falling asleep.

            Homer gives us the whole truth; because, as the writer says:

“He knew that even the most cruelly bereaved must eat; that hunger is stronger than sorrow and that its satisfaction takes precedence even of tears”

Huxley refers to another scene from a non-tragic literature Fielding’s Tom Jones, a novel, in which Sophia, heroine of the novel, was lifted by an inn-keeper from her horse. But the foot of the inn keeper slipped and he fell down. Consequently she fell on the top him and the brief and partly gleam of Sophia’s charming posterior was revealed before the bumpkins at the door.

          

  Huxley further claims that, if ‘Desdemona’ of the tragedy or ‘Othello’ had faced some incident as Sophia did this kind of incident she must have lost her place of heroine of the tragedy; because all of the main characters of the tragedy must be chemically pure. 

 At last we can say that, the purpose of both tragedy and the whole truth is to depict the human life. As tragedy is restricted by some rules and regulations, it is unable to bring out every aspect of human life, but non-tragic literature can do it well. Therefore it is obvious that tragedy, the partial truth has much difference from the whole truth.   

This paper is prepared for you by Talim Enam, BA (Hons), MA in English.

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