Tragedy

The feeling you get when you read the tragic end of a character in a work of art- and by characters of the tragedy, I do not mean the typical Aristotelian ones, but those like Nora or Blanche Dubois or Stanley or even Vladimir and Estragon- sounds familiar much?

That feeling which somehow renders your articulative powers inactive. You cannot say anything for a really long time. Moreover, a few veins and arteries near your heart seem to have got knotted tightly.

This, I believe, cannot be a result of anything you feel for the character. You feel this way because you know that you are or you could have been the character. You have seen people around you, close friends or distant relatives, who are or could have been those characters too. The knot near your heart and the loss of speech are a result of the fear arising from the certainty of the knowledge that you or those people will some day meet the same fate as the fictitious characters.

A little while later, you are able to think again. Then, one part of your brain congratulates you for being a good reader, the kind that writers love. But that part is soon overwhelmed by other stronger ones. You worry, you cry, you shout, even throw stuff around. At the end, a small part of your brain wishes you hadn’t understood that piece of literature at all. It would have been easier if you hadn’t gone beyond the typification and the character analyses. At least then you would have been among the chattering girls in the hostel mess, worried about getting an extra helping of the Sunday special dessert.

You do not know what to do. You still cannot speak a word and those knots seem to have not loosened one bit.