Criticism
Like many of Euripides' tragedies, Herakles consists of two parts. Having been raised to the height of triumph when he kills Lycus, Herakles is then driven to the depths of despair by Madness. There is no real connection between the two parts, and for this reason, the play is often criticized for lack of unity.
Courage, endurance and nobility are the themes of this play. Megara in the first half of the play and Herakles in the second are innocent victims of powerful, authoritative forces they cannot defeat. The spiteful, irrational nature of Hera's jealous plot against Herakles can be seen to mirror Euripides' notion of an indifferent world ruled by chance. Herakles' reactions also carry a message for men to rely on themselves, not on the hope of divine authority and wisdom—that the concept of moral goodness operates in humanity alone. Herakles must learn to recognise and live with the fact that violence and madness are part of his nature and only he has the right to forgive what he has done.
Read more about this topic: Herakles (Euripides)
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)