A survey of the great literature of the world reveals that, with the exception of The Bible, The Koran, John Milton's Paradise Lost and possibly James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, no writer of note has hit upon this simple device to resolve the dramatic crises of their writings. In tale after tale, protagonists suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without the benefit of divine intervention.
Imagine a Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act V, where an Angel King Hamlet exchanges the poison drinks and weapons for less lethal alternatives and convinces usurper Claudius to voluntarily abdicate his throne to a newly heroic Prince of Denmark.
Or an Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman where a reincarnated Angel Ben Loman appears bearing a new, lucrative sales route to bestow on his father. How about an update of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind where Angel Melanie reappears and leads the South to victory, saves baby Bonnie from her equestrian mishap and convinces Rhett and Scarlett that they were truly meant for each other. And of course, there would be a Herman Melville's Moby Dick where another angelic Starbuck finally nails the great white whale for Captain Ahab with a propitious cast of his harpoon.
You can see the possibilities.
Post-modern critics may argue that dramatic art isn’t like that. In our poetry, our plays, our books, and our movies, bad things happen to good people all the time and recently deceased revenants with heavenly bodies don’t always appear to make things right.
Aristotle taught us that art imitates nature. Isn't it about time that art imitate the supernatural?
Article comments