Analysis Of Tom Stoppards The Hard Problem - 1694 Words

Tom Stoppard is a brilliant British playwright, whose intentions of writing are usually to touch, or provoke the intellectual and spiritual part of our beings. One of his profound plays The Hard Problem reveals the nature of consciousness and the importance of the awareness of human beings. That topic is quite deep and intense to be openly discussed, thus the author chooses to present the story of Hilary, a young psychology researcher, and cover up the initial tragic genre with easily accessible ones. The Hard Problem reveals a combination of a romantic comedy and sci-fi as sub genres and tragedy as a core genre. Tragedy genre originates from Ancient Greece and was staged as part of a huge festival called the City of Dionysian. Tragedy then was designed to have a sort of purging effect upon the community. In terms of genre, tragedy usually requires a tragic hero, who is often tempted to perform a deed, after which the hero’s fortune suffers a decline. The major elements of t ragedy are strongly discussed by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in his well-known book Poetics. According to Aristotle, tragedy starts with order and finishes with disorder. In addition, the plot is the most important piece in tragedy and it is focused on human suffering. Aristotle discusses in details, the notion of catharsis, which is the purpose of evoking pity and fear in the audience and seeking piece by the end of the play. In other words it is very similar to the concept of