A Human Tragedy

I feel the things we are often the most disturbed by on the news these days are the actions committed by people that seem inhuman. With genocide and terrorist attacks, torture, and even closer to home, discrimination, the actions done by humans that deny the humanity of others seem to be the most heinous.

It is interesting then, that we should be more disturbed by a tragedy that appears more human to us than an Aristotelian-type production. In the Introduction to Saint Joan, Joley Wood writes, "We are not invited to take part in someone's error, but in the distress one encounters when the right thing was done, yet failure was always imminent." Then later, she goes on to develop this idea with Shaw's own preface that says "'There are no villains in the piece… It is, I repeat, what normally innocent people do that concerns us.'"

Aristotelian tragedy offers the comfort that if we always do what we believe is right constantly strive to be the best people we can be, that we can avoid the distress and downfall of the tragic hero. What Shaw  illuminates for us though, is that we can never know if we are right. Both sides of any conflict believe they are acting in the right and that they are justified but, "both act with 'good' yet mutually contradictory intentions." I wonder if the reason Shaw's type of tragedy disturbs us so much more is because we can't imagine becoming the monsters of people we see on the news.

If we ever fail to acknowledge the humanity in another person, than surely we have become the tragic hero, the flawed monster to whom we never believed we could relate. Can we ever truly justify killing, torturing, discriminating, or other actions that deny any human their humanity? There is a reason that the term 'human rights' exists, so how can we possibly know when someone has forfeited these rights, and no longer deserves to be treated as a human?

I would challenge anyone who wishes to think about the Introduction to Saint Joan and this idea of tragedy as it may apply to the things we see happening all around us that we may distance ourselves from. As for me, I think of the incarceration system. I have heard so many people claim that prisoners have forfeited their rights by committing a crime, but if our system of punishment denies them their human rights and therefore denies them any kind of healing, are we not simply perpetuating this culture of violence and cycle of denying one another the human rights everyone deserves.