Midterm Essays

Normally I would start this off with a witty retort or a joke but this is a essay portion of a test and they don't grade snark or humor. So here I go.

6) Interpreting Greek Speeches

The funeral speech (since I can't spell ancient Greek names off the top of my head) doesn't really seem to fit the style of rhetoric that is way placed under besides the setting where it takes place. It doesn't have the other qualifications that speeches under the same category would have. No mentions of human vice or virtue, it's just said for the sake of tradition and where the speaker is at. It's like someone giving a speech that would seem like a foot in the mouth thing at a graduation ceremony just for the sake of the ceremony itself and the long-standing tradition that someone has to give a speech to fit the time limit.

Like Kelly said in her version of her essay, there's not a whole lot besides where this is taking place that would make it seem like it truly fits where history and rhetoric have placed it. There are foreign elements in the entire thing that now makes me scratch my head and wonder why. But I can't really challenge historians and PHD holders on that since I'm not absolutely qualified to do so at the present time. There's really not a lot to say about it other than it was there for the sake of the people.

1) The Irrational

Drama is everywhere, in the media and in real life. I literally saw two girls start a fight that caused everyone else to run in High School and I made a sketch about it during my drama class. Why? Because I didn't know how else to deal with it other than acting it out.

I would imagine why the Greeks would do that for life as well. They had their pantheon of Gods and Demi-Gods to explain weather and death but other than that there was too much for them to place on religion and worship. It's like the pope laid the blame for everything at God's feet (metaphorically speaking) and walking away. It's not the proper why to deal and explain why things happen.

In addition, acting it out can be therapeutic. One can channel the energy form a bad day and let loose on the stage without slaying someone (unlike the Romans) and walk away feeling tons better. Of course that would also have to depend on how much effort and direction they send that energy.

The other way it deals with life is that we don't focus on our own lives and send our sympathies to the characters in a play. It's a great way to deal with emotions when you have a good cry with lets say Romeo and Juliet or be absolutely disgusted with Oedipus when the truth was revealed. All the audience's energy goes to the characters and the story that is being shown on stage. And when you run out of energy, you don't think about what happened that day and be ready to face the next one as crazy as it could seem.

Starting from somewhere

I prefer to sleep in on the weekends.

The same counts for the weekend of General Conference. Which is why I shall personally hug the genius that invented DVR because I can sleep in and watch the morning sessions.

Uchtdorf's talk about keeping things simple is one of my favorites.

It explains that we can keep things simple and that can get us one step closer to God.

I'm not the perfect Mormon. I tend to shy away from activities because I don't do so well in crowds and I'm not the best scriptorian.

In this sense I feel most of the time that I fall short compared to others, that I need to be able to think of a scripture right off the bat and I need to be in the middle of a gathering. Y'know be the ideal Mormon and because I am me I don't feel like that's possible.

But his talk resonated with me, letting me know that no one is where they need to be but we can start from where we are in our lives and head towards being the person that God wants us to be.

It's a wonderful feeling to know that despite my flaws, I'm not down and out yet in this world and in God's eyes.

Way to put on a show

So I attended the play on Monday, you know spent eight dollars and left right after my job at the BYU Landry ended with some high hopes.

Personal experience with the Greeks and their plays has been pretty high. I helped put on Antigone  in high school.

But this.... as much as I love Grecian theater and the play-writes, I would have to say that I would have had to watch that Looney Tunes episode where Elmer and Bugs performed viking opera in order to get the same emotional response the actual play left me with instead of this production.

Tragedies showcase a major flaw and the characters tempt fate and while you feel sad for them, you also realize that they did get what they deserved or in the words of that one song: "they had it coming".

But this production didn't deliver it so much. I would understand and be able to feel more for the characters if the chorus didn't try so hard to be funny. The whole thing was meant to be about justice and the right to properly grieve, and Electra learning the folly of trying to serve her own sense of justice upon the world. The chorus is supposed to guide us through the play so we can understand and learn so that we as humans do not make the same mistakes.

To er is to be human and the plays are supposed to bring that out.

But in this case, I would stick to the book than jump up on stage thank you very much.

Preaching to the Chorus

This is me.

5 ft, loaded with attitude and armed with a brain that just won't stop.

I have to say that if this was about Greeks in general I would throw in a witty comment about their amazing food but this is Ancient Greece we're talking about though I'm sure the food in the ancient world was amazing too because it had to start somewhere right.

But for a while I was stumped, until I remembered that in High School I was in Drama and we talked about these crazy innovators in regards to the arts.

Upon research and reading Greek Theatre: Tragedy and Comedy well as much as I could without having to pay for an account being the cheap person that I am, I learned a lot. 

  The Greeks created the Satyr Plays, Comedies, and Tragedies to either make light of the problems they faced in an absurd fashion or to hammer down Morals that still ring true even in this day and age.

Their tragedies reflected mostly upon hubris or pride and how that mixed with another adjective, mostly ambition could allow someone to forget their roots and lead to disaster. On top of that the tragedies often warned us in the aspect of Tempting Fate, a common troupe that says that something will always happen no matter how much one can try to deride or stop it. 

Regardless, the Greek play-writes like Shakespeare have created truths that still ring true to us with Mythos loaded with lessons and morals that I would like to send to a few choice people (looking at you Washington D.C) so that maybe, maybe they can learn from and change their ways to ensure a better future for us. 

But in the end, it's still Greek to me.