A Comparative Tragedy Study of Fatalism and Determinism...

A Comparative Tragedy Study of Fatalism and Determinism: Oedipus Rex and The Thunderstorm 1. INTRODUTION The Thunderstorm and Oedipus Rex, the representatives of Chinese and Greek play, both tell tragic stories about incest and unexpected destiny. The two masterpieces reveal much about the literature patterns and philosophical implications of the different cultures. The exploration of the two plays could help further understand the oneness of world literature and the tragedy of unlike culture. This paper will compare two famous tragic dramas—Oedipus Rex and The Thunderstorm to analyze the similarities and differences in terms of the tragic themes—fatalism and determinism. The process of textual analysis will be associated with the†¦show more content†¦However, they mainly discuss from their own understanding and fail to employ strong tragedy theory to support their viewpoints. Foreign scholars do not conduct many researches on The Thunderstorm. Nevertheless, Chinese scholars have looked deeply into this drama. Both Xin Xianxi (1981) and Wang Linlin (2009) argue that Cao Yu is strongly influenced by the traditional Greek tragedy and Christianity religious belief so that the play has mystical idea of fate, which adds to the impressiveness of the play. However, they fail to take the social background into account when analyzing the tragic spirit of The Thunderstorm. Wan Ping (2010) classifies the tragic spirit of The Thunderstorm into three different categories: the tragedy of love, fate and personality and all the tree aspects of the play make it an intense plot and dramatic artistic effect. Also, he doesn’t consider the social background, which is important part of the play. From the above, we could see that the two plays are well studied by western and eastern scholars. Yet, not so many researchers discuss the similarities and differences between this specific two plays or even the Greek and Chinese drama in general. 3. ANALYSIS OF TRAGIC THEMES: FATALISM AND