We Laugh So That We Don't...

First, a disclaimer: I am not heartless. I do feel sympathy in the right situations. I am not evil. I also hope to avoid getting in trouble for saying what might not be a well loved statement, although I have a feeling that maybe some of you will agree with me.

In class on Wednesday, we watched a couple scenes from Trojan Women. Dr. Sexson noted how we all laughed at Andromache's howl of anguish so that we didn't cry, and sat rapt through her speech as it tugged at our hearts.

Well...

I didn't laugh not to cry. I laughed because I found it all ridiculous.

Sorry.

That wail of pain just didn't do it for me. You can't fake one, and a faked one won't work for anyone who has heard a real one. And the speeches, they too fall short. My complaint throughout reading Euripides' Trojan Women was that it was filled with long, declamatory statements, each person working through an eloquent soliloquy in the midst of their tragedy. Anyone who has ever been in a horrific situation, who has suffered through adverse conditions, who has ever had such a shock to their moral centers as might replicate, in part or whole, what these woman went through in the play, knows that grief is not readily expressed that way. You don't create these contrived monologues. You don't even finish sentences. No one would relate these ridiculously long bits in real life in a situation like that. Euripides' play is extravagantly excessive and not even remotely convincing. This was not a problem for a comedic play such as Lysistrata, but for a play that wants to be taken seriously, it rings false and destroys any sense of reality. Far from bowing down to Euripides' ability to be at the heart of tragedy, I question his right to any such claim, and cry out the falseness of his asinine depiction of this horrendous occurrence.

Doesn't everyone love when the college student goes, "Well, if I had written _____, I would have _____," because at that students young age and level of experience, he certainly knows better than the author known for thousands of years. Well, as always, I love to go against that sort of thing, and so, what would I do if I had written Trojan Women? I would have had fragments of sentences, incomplete dialogue, scrambled, nonsensical nonsense that only the grief-stricken know how to babble, and then I would have doused it all with aching, horrifying, heart-wrenching sobs. I would let you witness the complete breakdown of a woman who lost everything. That is more emotional, more traumatizing, than any long speech will ever be, in my eyes at least.