Understanding Of Suffering Essay, Research Paper

Understanding of Suffering

The agony of adult male is a really complicated affair that is most likely impossible to understand wholly. It is a topic that people have grappled with since the morning of recorded history. In fact, agony is apparent in every signifier of art adult male has created. Suffering is in our pictures, our poesy, our music, our dramas, and in anything else that is imaginable. But still, we as a whole still struggle with the thought of enduring. It is my sentiment that some persons may hold on the impression of enduring more than others, but that no one individual will of all time to the full understand agony in every signifier. A individual may merely understand his or her ain personal agony, non enduring as a whole. It is the following measure to so state that? understanding comes through agony, ? which I besides believe to be true. It is impossible to to the full cognize what the agony of a individual is like, unless you have experienced the same thing in his ain places. Two illustrations of this are Aeschylus? s drama Agamemnon and Elie Wiesel? s history of the Holocaust, Night. Throughout both of the plants, agony is a really prevailing subject. The characters in Night and in Agamemnon undergo both psychological and physical agony. It is really easy to see that their agony occurs, and one may even sympathize with the characters, but it is impossible to wholly understand the agony that they go through. One may merely travel so far as to state that they have gone through something similar, and they know what it must hold been like, or that they can conceive of how it must hold been for the characters. This, nevertheless, is non complete apprehension. Merely through personal experience can a individual to the full understand what his or her agony is.

In the Agamemnon, agony is apparent in about every character. Even before the action of the drama begins, awful things have already occurred that cause much agony in the doomed House of Atreus. We learn that Agamemnon is challenged by the Gods to give his first-born girl Iphigeneia so that the ground forces may sail to Troy. He states the followers:

Heavy so my destiny if I disobey,

but heavy, excessively, if I must slaughter my kid,

the glorification of my house, fouling a male parent? s custodies

with watercourses of a virgin? s blood beside the communion table.

Which of these two things is without immorality?

There is sacred jurisprudence on their side, that they passionately covet

a virgin? s blood as forfeit to squelch the air currents.

May it turn out good ( Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 211-219 ) .

This is evidently a great cause for internal battle and agony for Agamemnon. Iphigeneia? s decease besides greatly affects his married woman Clytemnestra. She is really acrimonious towards him, and she believes that he did non hold to give Iphigeneia. While Agamemnon believes he did so out of necessity, Clytemnestra thinks that it was his ain free will that murdered Iphigeneia. She cries out to the chorus that? He sacrificed his ain girl, dearest hurting of my uterus, to capture the perversity of Thracian air currents? ( Agamemnon, 1415-1417 ) . The loss of her girl has caused her so much hurting and sorrow that she chooses to take retaliation upon Agamemnon by slaying him. With three work stoppages she kills him and slop his blood on the house? s floors ( Agamemnon, 1380-1392 ) . This, of class, is merely more agony for Agamemnon, his kids, and the people of Argos. A complete apprehension of the type of enduring that these characters go through can non merely be arrived at through the reading. The drama merely allows the reader to place the agony and compare it to your ain experiences of hurting. This lone offers a really narrow apprehension of the agony that the characters really went through. In the terminal, you are still left with merely a full apprehension of your ain agony. It is impossible to be able to put yourself in this type of utmost state of affairs and to find precisely what the agony must hold been like for the characters. The agony must really be experienced in order to to the full understand it.

A terrible instance of enduring takes topographic point in Elie Wiesel? s Night. Wiesel wrote Night as an history of what he saw and what he endured throughout the Holocaust of World War II. The hurting and agony inflicted in the Judaic concentration cantonments remains as one of the greatest atrociousnesss of all time committed against adult male. Eliezer, the immature male child in the narrative, witnesses this all first manus and tells us of the great agony that occurred. There are so many ghastly cases of wretchedness given throughout the history that they are far to legion to give an illustration of each. I can merely get down to check the surface of what type of anguish the Jews were put through in his history. First of wholly, the Jews were merely being disposed of as if the

Ys were non human existences at all. During his first dark in the cantonments, Eliezer saw possibly one of the most awful things a individual could be made to witness. Babies were being thrown into a ditch of fire to be eliminated.

Not far from us, fires were jumping up from a ditch, mammoth fires. They were firing

something. A lorry drew up at the cavity and delivered its burden? small kids. Babies! Yes, I

proverb it? saw it with my ain eyes? those kids in the fires. ( Is it surprising that I could

non kip after that? Sleep had fled from my eyes. ) ( Elie Wiesel, Night, 30 )

It is merely impossible how something like this could go on. Working in cantonments with small to no nutrient left many captives perfectly hopeless. There were no happy times, merely enduring and changeless fright of decease. This left many people doubting whether God himself even existed. As Eliezer thinks back on a hanging he witnessed, he remembers a adult male inquiring? Where is God? Where is He? ? ( Night, 61 ) . The fact that many work forces lost all consolation in God merely magnifies how great their agony must hold been. In fact, oftentimes throughout the narrative, a individual? s despair turns him into an animate being, wholly without ethical motives. Alternatively of sympathizing with one another, they turn against each other trusting that their fetching advantage of another will assist them last. There is even a clip in which a male child beats his ain male parent to decease so that he may hold a ball of staff of life to eat ( Night, 96 ) . Never could anyone even claim to understand the agony that each of these single Jews went through. A individual must hold experienced the absolute horrors that occurred during the Holocaust in order to to the full understand their agony. Anyone who claims that they can understand the agony that these people experienced is rather merely non stating the truth. Possibly they know that it was perfectly atrocious, and that it was far worse than any type of enduring that they have gone through, but they do non to the full understand the hurting that the Jews experienced. This is an first-class illustration of how merely the individual who goes through the agony to the full understands it.

Fortunately, throughout my life I have non encountered the type of enduring that occurs in Agamemnon or the type of enduring that is contained within Night. I have been lucky, and my agony has merely been mild. It is, nevertheless, alone to myself. In the winter of 1991 my gramps became really sick, and he was placed in the infirmary for several hebdomads. Unfortunately, I was merely allowed to see him one time because I was still reasonably immature. We were really near. Because he was so sick, he was merely able to squash my finger and rub my manus during the visit. Nevertheless, I could see how much joy I had brought him. After I left the room, he struggled to compose me a short missive stating me how much he loved me. I read it over and over once more when I got home from the infirmary. The idea that he could really decease kept me awake the full dark weeping. I still have the missive today and it brings cryings to my eyes merely believing about it. About a hebdomad subsequently it really happened. My gramps died on Christmas Eve. It was merely one twenty-four hours before I was traveling to see him once more. I was devastated. I couldn? T believe that he was really gone. It hurt me so deep inside that I couldn? t even approach the coffin at his funeral. Peoples can see that it hurt me severely, they can seek to set themselves in my places, and they can even retrieve what it was like when their gramps died. This, nevertheless, does non let them to to the full understand what was traveling on inside of my caput. Merely I know my feelings and merely I know precisely how his decease affected my life. No one individual can of all time to the full understand what sort of agony I went through at that clip. Not Agamemnon, non Clytemnestra, non even Eliezer can wholly understand it. Just as I can non understand their torment, they can non understand mine. This was my hurting, and merely through it do I understand my agony.

In decision, agony is a portion of every adult male? s life. A individual? s torture is alone and is non to the full understood by any other individual. This type of anguish takes topographic point in Elie Wiesel? s Night and in Aeschylus? s Agamemnon. In these plants it is really easy to see that they experience great wretchedness, but it is impossible to understand their agony. Their agony can merely be identified, and compared to an person? s ain agony. One must see agony in order to to the full understand what it was like. It is wholly a personal experience. It is for this ground that understanding comes through agony.

Aeschylus. Agamemnon, in the Oresteia. Translated by David Grene and Wendy O? Flaherty.

Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Wiesel, Elie. Night ( 1958 ) . Translated by Stella Rodway. New York: Bantam, 1960.