Self Sacrificing for an Ideal: Georg Polti Plots or Storylines - The 36 Dramatic or Tragic Situations
Abstract
Four situations follow concerned with self-sacrifice and so have common elements. The ideal here may be political or religious, honor or piety, etc. It requires the sacrifice of all! If you have been intending to start that novel or screenplay but felt short of ideas, here is the Wise Women’s synopsis of plot to give you a few ideas. May the Goddess inspire you. Saviour Shirlie.
The next four situations are concerned with self-sacrifice and so have common elements. The forces involved are:
passion (vice, etc)
pure affection (for friends, parents, benefactors, and particularly devotion to their honor, their happines, their interests)
reasons of state (will to live, cupidity, ambition, avarice, vanity)
honor (truthfulness,feminine chastity, promises to god, filial piety).
To generate alternative scenarios oppose these two by two and study the ensuing conflicts. Some will be those covered here. Others might include:
a passion or vice destroying interests of state (even in Antony and Cleopatra the emphasis is on the two lovers rather than the peril of their peoples)
egoism (in the form of, say, ambition) struggling with faith, a frequent case in religious wars
egoism (like ambition) overcoming natural affection eg by denying or sacrificing father, mother, friend, etc
a conflict between personal honor and reasons of state.
Then oppose the various nuances to each other eg the hero caught between his faith and the honor of his people, etc. Myriads of subjects will emerge. The ideal may be political or religious, honor or piety, etc. It requires the sacrifice of all!
Elements
A hero
An ideal
A “creditor” or
A person or thing sacrificed
Themes
Sacrifice of life
for the sake of one’s word
for the success of one’s people
in filial piety
for the sake of one’s faith
Love (and life) sacrificed
for one’s faith
to a cause
to interests of state
Sacrifice of well-being to duty
The ideal of “honor” sacrificed to the ideal of “faith”
A commentator on one of the Pugwash Conferences of concerned scientists observed: “They may want a scientific community, but they do not want a scientific party.” Maybe it is time they did!
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