You stole my story and something's got to be done about it.
If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this__he absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage__uch events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality__o draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are __aw files._ But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero__ personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.
The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex/Oedipus at Colonus/Antigone
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If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this__he absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage__uch events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality__o draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are __aw files._ But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero__ personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.
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