A defense of tragedy

Did Lady Macbeth have schizophrenia? Hysteria? Was Macbeth suffering from PTSD? These are the questions several of the English classes are attempting to answer in their final projects this week.

Asking these questions it trivializes the tragedy of Shakespeare's play and of the human experience. Why believe in the Fall, in greed and sin when it can conveniently be passed off as a chemical imbalance or a result of upbringing or experience.

In humans unending effort to rationalize, explain and control the world through scientific methods human experience becomes marginalized. When children are energetic we medicate them. When adults feel sadness we medicate them or send them to therapy, indicating that these emotions are not normal. Attributing the actions of Lord and Lady Macbeth to a chemical imbalance or psychological disorder reduces human experience to the mean-anything out of the ordinary, that is not average, must have some exterior cause and cannot be the result of human nature.

"Harrison Bergeron," a satiric and insightful Vonnegut short story, offers a tragic look at a society where the norm has become an enforced rule. Yet, the effects of such an outlook are more subtle. If we suppress the depths of human emotion in favor keeping everyone on an even keel, then we take away a part of life that makes it worth living and gives it meaning. Life's joys and triumphs are much sweeter when set against periods of sorrow and failure. Poets and writers know this--it is intense passion or deep sorrow that provides the impetus for works of art. If Edger Allen Poe had been on anti-depressants American Literature would be much poorer, and those suffering tragedy would not have the solace of seeing a mirror of their experience.

It is clear that by the end of the play Lady Macbeth's sanity at least is in jeopardy. Attributing the cause of mental break to the power of her actions and the intensity of her greed serves to illustrate the power of the human experience, rather than diminishing it by claiming the insanity came first.