Elucidate Raymond Williams views on Rejection of Tragedy

Williams essay Rejection of Tragedy is a study of the rejection of tragedy in modern age with
special reference to Bertolt Brechet who founded epic theater as compared to the emotional
theory of Aristotle. He rejected the conventional idea of tragedy and made tragedy more
experiential and rational.He made people think above the situation presented in the tragedy and
not within. Aristotelian drama enforced thinking from within and Brechets theater from
without. He used distancing affects to turn people like spectators who sit in the chair, smoke and
observe. He showed what the audience wanted to see. Williams has discussed six plays: The
Three Penny Opera, Saint Joan of the Stockyard, Die Massnahme, The Good Woman of Sezuen,
Mother Courage and Her Children and the Life of Galileo. In the last play mentioned, the hero is
offered two choices one between accepting the terms or the other being destroyed. Nevertheless,
the hero recants. Tragedy, says Williams, in some of its older senses is certainly rejected by this
complex seeing. The major achievement of Brechet is recovery of history as a dimension of
tragedy. In tragedy we must see continuity and desire for change. Catastrophe should not halt
the action or push the contradictions of life into background. Suffering should be avoided
because suffering breaks us, Brechet thinks that our will to struggle should not die under the
weight of sufferings. Brechets own words are the precise expression o this new sense of tragedy:
The sufferings of this man appall me, because they are unnecessary
Brechet believes that response to suffering is crucial and weight of suffering is borne by all of us.
Even the spectator becomes a participant. As a participant he can condemn or comprehend the
sufferings. And for this purpose, he needs some active principle which he finds in the system.
But systemmakes its principles for its defense not for its rejection. Our disgust is directed
against morality; not upon the system. Under these circumstances morality serves the cause of
the cruel system and religion and spiritualism lose their effectiveness. Morality, religion and
spiritualism are used by the exploiting class as a shield against public resentment. Brechet
rejected and exposed the validity of the so-called refined sentiments of goodness, love and
sacrifice. There are, to him, fake sentiments, romanticized on purpose. Love, he thinks,
separates us from humanity. The emphasis on love can look like growth but it is often a simple
withdrawal from the human action. Love is defined and capitalized in separation from
humanity. Williams declares:
An evil system is protected by a false morality
Brecht's narrative style, which he called Epic Theater, was directed against the illusion created
by traditional theater of witnessing a slice of life. Instead, Brecht encouraged spectators to watch
events on stage dispassionately and to reach their own conclusions. To prevent spectators from
becoming emotionally involved with a play and identifying with its characters, Brecht used a
variety of techniques. Notable among them was the alienation or estrangement effect, which was
achieved through such devices as choosing (for German audiences) unfamiliar settings,
interrupting the action with songs, and announcing the contents of each scene through posters.
Brecht first attracted attention in the Berlin as the author of provocative plays that challenged
the tenets of traditional theater. In St. Joan a modern-day Joan of Arc advocates the use of
force in the fight against exploitation of workers. In his play, Mother Courage and her Children
Brechet invites us to see what happens to a good person a bad society. Through Sheen Lee, he
seeks to show how goodness is exploited by gods and men and how good person is alienated.
The antiwar play Mother Courage and Her Children shows an indomitable mother figure who
misguidedly seeks to profit from war but loses her children instead. Brechets play Good
Woman of Sezuin presents a kindhearted prostitute. She is good but she is alienated. Brecht
called this a parable play, the kindhearted prostitute is forced to disguise herself as her ruthless
male cousin and exploit others in order to survive. According to Brechet the most alienated are
the best. He collects life from all corners of the world when he says:
Today when human character must be understood as the totality of all
social conditions, the epic theater is the only one that can comprehend all the
processes which could serve for a fully representative picture of the world
He rejected the idea that suffering can ennoble us. Bad societies, he thinks, needs heroes and it
is bad life that needs sacrifices. He considers it a sin against life to allow oneself to be destroyed
by cruelty. His mature dramas show that it is not possible to label people good or bad. Goodness
and badness are the two alternate labels in the same individual. We have a split consciousness
and live under this tension. Williams calls it Complex Seeing which was rejected by the
traditional conception of tragedy. Mother Courage and her Children is a dramatization of
conflicting instincts in a person who is not consciousness of these conflicts. But the case in The
Life of Galileo is different. Galileo is fully conscious and is free in making a choice. Galileo deals
with the responsibility of the intellectual to defend his or her beliefs in the face of opposition
from established authorities, in Galileos case the Roman Catholic Church. We can admire or
despite Galileo but Brechet is not asking us to do this. He is only telling us what happens to
consciousness when it caught in a deadlock between individual and social morality. We are so
used to tragedy and martyrdom under such circumstances that we are unable to see this
experience in a radically different way complex seeing and accept the complexity of the
situation as a fact of life. Facts that are concealed and brought to light as in, The Life of Galileo
Barberini says:
It is my own mask that permits me certain freedoms today. Dressed like
this. I might be heard to murmur. If God did not exist, we should have to invent
him
Williams in this case presents the example of Mother Courage and comments that the history
and people come alive on the stage, leaping past the isolated and virtually static action that we
have got used to in most modern theatre. The drama, in his opinion, simultaneously occurs and
is seen. It is not take the case of this woman but see and consider what happens to these
people. The point is not what we feel about her hard lively opportunism; it is what we see, in the
action, of its results. By enacting a genuine consequence, in Williams view, Brecht raises his
central question to a new level, both dramatically and intellectually. The question is then no
longer are they good people? Nor is it, really, what should they have done? It is, brilliantly,
both what are they doing? and what is this doing to them? In Williams opinion, to detach the
work from its human purpose is, Brecht sees, to betray others and so betray life. It is not, in the
end, what we think of Galileo as a man, but what we think of this result.