The tragic pain of Cyrano had more to do with the mental pain than physical pain. Cyrano was self-conscious of his nose so it stopped him from going after his love, Roxanne. Many people would say remarks about his nose caused him a lot of pain inside, which he would not show.
Busybody: I find it small, quite small, tiny!
Cyrano: A plague on that! An absurd small nose, you now inform us! Small? My nose?
Busybody: O heavens!
Cyrano: It’s Enormous! ...
In these lines, a busybody was staring at Cyrano’s nose. Cyrano asked what he was staring at. The busybody could not tell Cyrano that he was staring at his nose. Cyrano knew that he was staring at his nose so instead of having the busybody insult him insults himself.
Oedipus self-inflicts pain on himself. When he sees that Jocasta is dead he stabs his eyes out with pins from Jocasta’s brooch. This causes him great physical pain, but he is not fazed by it because of the fact that Jocasta died.
(Lines 1277-128.)
These lines describe what Oedipus did to his eyes when he saw Jocasta dead. Eliezer, Cyrano and Oedipus all suffer the tragedy of pain in the literature pieces. Although the pain each character suffers is different from one another they all suffer pain.
The love each of the main characters face is tragic. Eliezer loves his father with all of his heart, but at different points in Night. Eliezer thinks that he would be better if his father would just die instead of him having to take care of his dad and not helping himself. When Eliezer realizes he thinks these things about his father, he immediately tries to erase the idea from his mind: “But at the same moment this thought came into my mind: ‘Don’t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight, so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself.’ Immediately I felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever.” In this quote, Elie Wiesel describes exactly what he thought about his father. Eliezer had too much love for his father to let him die even though he sometimes thought that it would be better if his father would die.
Cyrano’s tragic love story was not about love for a family member but for a woman, Roxane. Throughout the book one hears of Cyrano’s love for Roxane but he is too afraid to tell her. At one moment in the play, Roxane is describing who the man she loves is to Cyrano. At first, Cyrano thinks it is him, but then Roxane says he is handsome and he soon realizes it cannot possibly be him. The person Roxane is describing turns out to be Christian, and Cyrano decides to help Christian win the love of Roxane. At the end of the play, Cyrano is on his death-bed, and he begins to recite one of Christian letters he wrote to Roxane which he actually wrote himself. He was reciting the letter in the dark to Roxane:
“Roxane: You love me.
Cyrano: No…
Roxane: Now truth has got the better of you.
Cyrano: No, no, my dearest love, I didn’t love you!
Roxane: Things that I thought were dead are born again. Why, during all those years, were you silent, when here on the letter, where Christian had no place, these tears were your tears.”
In this quote, although Cyrano is about to die he still will not tell the truth to Roxane about his love for her in order to keep his promise to Christian.
In Oedipus the King, Oedipus has to deal with the tragic love of his wife, who he discovers is also his mother.
(Lines 1401-1406.)
In these lines, Oedipus had just found out that he indeed did kill his father and he married his mother. He cannot believe he has done such things.
In all three of these pieces of literature they all have tragic love stories in them. Eliezer, Cyrano, and Oedipus all have lost a loved one from either through the death of the loved one or their own, or finding out the truth about their past.
The tragedy of death is found throughout all three literature pieces. Although Eliezer’s father dies, Eliezer also feels as if he died due to all the tragedy he saw and had to go through. He describes himself as a corpse. “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.” In this quote, Eliezer looks in the mirror and instead of seeing himself as alive he sees himself as if he were dead. He was no longer the person he was before he went through the Holocaust; his soul was dead.
Cyrano dies at the end of Cyrano de Bergerac after he is hit on the head by a dropped log. His death is even more tragic because Roxane just discovered that Cyrano was in love with her:
Ragueneau: Thank goodness you’re here today! I can tell you what I dreaded to saying to her- I’d set off to visit your friend, and was almost there, when I saw him leaving his house- and so I ran after him. He was turning the corner, and then – A working-man (was it by chance? - I wonder!) Dropped a great log of wood-
In these lines from the play, Ragueneau is telling Le Bret what happened to Cyrano. Ragueneau thinks the log being dropped on Cyrano was on purpose rather then an accident, this assumption also makes Cyrano’s death more tragic.
Oedipus does not die, but he loses is wife/mother. Jocasta kills herself because she finds out that Oedipus was her son and husband.
(Lines 1232-1246.)
In these lines, the second messenger is telling the Chorus what happened to Jocasta and how she died. He said that she while she was hanging herself she was thinking of Oedipus and how he killed her husband and had children with her. The tragic deaths in all of these literature pieces play a huge role in each piece. Each main character faces tragic deaths to either themselves or a loved one.
Although Night, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Oedipus the King are different they all share the common theme of tragedy. The tragedies of pain, love and death are found throughout all three of the literature pieces. They each express and show them differently. Eliezer, Cyrano, and Oedipus are all different people in different eras, but they still share the same tragedies of having to suffer through physical and mental pain, having to lose a loved one, and the tragedy of death each face in different ways. These pieces of work have stood the test of time and will continue to because they all can be related to by many and they show the true nature of human beings.
