Classical Literature is Rated R?

          

    In the real world violence is looked at as problem solving. A bully hits you, you hit back. Another country has something thing of value and money, you send the troops and destroy their homes to find it, so what about literature? Does it apply in their story world too? Of course it does, however, sometimes violence in literature can have deeper meanings. Take for instance the story of Oedipus Rex, a man whose name means swollen foot. He got this swollen foot from being thrown down the mountain as an infant, because his father got word from the oracle that he would kill him. Let's pause for a second and think about the mountain part. If someone wanted to kill someone, there's many other ways they could've gone about it, but the Greeks wanted that shock value, in which they succeed. You think about poor little infant Oedipus being thrown off the mountain and become enrage. Wondering how anyone can do that to a poor little baby, but knowing literature everything happens for a reason. Chapter 11 of Thomas Foster's How to Read Literature like a Professor, talks about violence moving the plot along and being a symbol. The Greeks didn't have to throw him throw him down the mountain, but they did. This gave him a character trait that could be easily noticed, so when Oedipus grew up and killed his biological father this trait could show, so one of the men that day could connect Oedipus to the killing, and Oedipus could come to the realization that he's the one that caused all the mess. With the marrying of the mother, and crazy stuff happening in the kingdom. This pushing the plot along so we could come to the ending. I know you're thinking well why couldn't they just stab him, and the scar would be a characteristic? One, because these are times where riding down to the market to trade, you could come across thieves and wars, get stabbed and have no medical attention, equaling everybody is getting stabbed and have scars to prove it. Two, people can get stabbed and survive, not a lot of people can fall of a mountain and survive. Three, it's the Greeks they're dramatic, give them a break. The same goes for other classical literature like King Lear. Even with all the violence and deaths it still has a symbolic meaning, and pushes the story on. Did they have to poke out Gloucester's eyes? No, but it gave him a way to make amends with his son, since he would've been too embarrass to seek him out. Did Cordelia really have to hang herself? Of course she did, this gave King Lear a reason to curse them all, so he could realize the mistake of shaming his favorite daughter, the only one that really loved him. Most classical literature has very gruesome violence, due to the fact they're trying to get a point through. The more violence, the more that's a stake for the character.