Adelphiasoplot
Hatred of Kinsmen: Georg Polti Plots or Storylines - The 36 Dramatic or Tragic Situations
Abstract
Wise Women Discuss—Plot!
Hatred of Kinsmen
Antithesis is the fount of art, particularly dramatic art, through the conflict it generates. Hatred of one who should be loved (this situation) and love of one who should be hated and An enemy loved offer a nice symmetry.
Three points:
- The more close the bonds which unite kinsmen who disagree, the more savage and dangerous their outbursts of hatred.
- If the hatred is not mutual the situation will tend toward other dramatic situations listed here in which one relative is tyrant and the other victim.
- The problem is to find a powerful enough reason for the close ties of kinship to be sundered.
Plainly any relationship could be fruitfully explored. The enmity of two brothers-in-law, ex-rivals, is explored in Jean Jullien’s La Mer (1891) in which emotion increases after the death of the principle character thus reflecting life where sorrow is often not fully felt until after a death. Hatred between sisters is not uncommon and offers the chance of studying feminine enmities, so lasting and so cruel. The antipathy of a mother and the husband of a young woman is commonplace and perhaps is therefore not adequately treated.
The hatred between the kinsmen can be modified. The role of a party torn between the two contending people can be explored, eg the wife and mother caught between a father and son conflict.
Elements
- A malevolent kinsman
- A hated or reciprocally hating kinsman
Themes
- Hatred of brothers
- One brother hated by several
- Reciprocal hatred
- Hatred between relatives for reasons of self-interest
- Hatred of parents and children, one way or mutual
- Of a son for his father
- Of a daughter and her father
- Hatred of grandfather for grandson. A facet of Hamlet, Shakespeare
- Hatred of father-in-law for son-in-law
- Hatred of mother-in-law for daughter-in-law
- Infanticide
