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‘The most dreadful outcome for the central protagonist in tragedy is the agony of continued
living rather than the release to be found in death
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There is a strong argument for the concept that within the texts of The Tragedy of
Pudd’nhead Wilson and King Lear the tragedy of the texts are intensified by the prolonged
living of the central protagonists, as opposed to other typical tragedies in which the central
protagonist dies a death that releases the character from the suffering that they are enduring
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The release of death is not granted, the way the characters want it to
be
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The idea of
the prolongation of dying; the destruction of spirit, nobility and dignity torments Roxy, Tom
and King Lear and the removal of the agonized consciousness is glorified
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KENT: Vex not his ghost; O, let him pass
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(5
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311-14)
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17)
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1  
 

splendid common sense and practical every-day ability, Roxy was a doting fool of a mother’
(p
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Her love for him is, as Peter Barry explains, her hamartia2; her tragic flaw which
ultimately leads to her downfall of seeing her son’s life agonisingly continued
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Fust time I
runs across yo’ master I’s gwine to tell him so (p
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She falls from her happiness ‘Roxy’s
heart was broken’, ‘the spirit in her eye was quenched’ and ‘the voice of her laughter ceased
in the land’ (pp
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145)
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When Roxy cannot die, she makes herself as small as possible, and Twain looks at those who
avoid constraints of society and by being so far beneath the public radar that they become
minimally existent, as Roxy does ‘In her church and its affairs she found her only solace’ (p
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Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle comment on the tragedies that occur within
characters that are without significantly higher places in society, and agree that even the
normal every day characters have limitations within the freedom of life ‘If modern tragedies
tend to be about ordinary people rather than kings or queen’s, they also show us how far the
lives of such ‘ordinary people’ are bound up, determined and constrained by broader social,
economic and political tragedies
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216-7  
3
Andrew Bennett, and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, Fourth Edition
(Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2009) p
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Roxy’s son, switched at birth with Thomas Beckett Driscoll, raised as a white heir to
substantial estate is spoiled, vicious and dissolute and used the real Tom as someone to abuse
repeatedly and cruelly ‘he was Tom’s patient target’ (p
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Tom’s yearning to be freed from
life and the continued living as a negro, once he knows the truth about his blood line, is pain
beyond measure in his mind ‘I am a nigger! Oh, I wish I was dead!’ (p
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It would have
been easier if Tom had died, the way his Mother had considered his fate to be, but she did not
act on her initial instinct and therefore Tom’s agony is prolonged through having to live
through the realization that he is black ‘Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was
a slave’ (p
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His rightful fate ‘the creditors sold him down the river’ (p
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Tom exclaims ‘a man’s own hand is his deadliest enemy’ (p
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This
statement is ultimately proven prophetic
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When
breaking into and burglarising homes throughout Dawson’s Landing he uses disguises to
escape detection
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Death, and the agony of not being released of slavery and humiliation
through it, is Tom’s only thought ‘How hard the nigger’s fate seems, this morning!-yet until
last night such a thought never entered my head (p
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The suffering felt by King Lear through continued living is as intense, violent and
relentless as Roxy’s love for her son, and the way that her love was Roxy’s downfall, King
Lear’s vain conceitedness is his
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King Lear wishes for an easy escape from the painful death that he
endures, and says ‘If you have poison for me, I will drink it’4 Lear repeatedly imagines that
his life has ended, and repeatedly is only hopefully and incorrect
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On coming to from madness, he says ‘You do me wrong
to take me out o’ th’ grave/ Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound’ (4
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44-45)
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Lear speaks of his daughters, especially Goneril, attacking him physically
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4
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4
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Within this language he is turning his daughters
against each other, and brings sadness upon Regan when she hears this
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4
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Lear’s suffering in this play seems
needless, and death does seem like the release that he needs and should be granted, however,
as Ashley Chantler and David Higgins explain ‘Aristotle’s ideas about catharsis can help us
to understand why watching the appalling sufferings of characters (…) is not only a
worthwhile but also necessary process’5
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6
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In the storm Lear tries to
reduce himself to the life ‘as cheap as beast’s’ becoming an ‘unaccommodated man’, ‘a poor,
bare, fork’d animal’ without his ‘lending’s’ (3
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106-8)
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Lear
begins to realize he is in limbo; he is both dead and not dead, and speaks of himself as
already deceased
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A
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7
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All further
references will be given in the body of the text
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38

4  
 

first; it smells of mortality’ (4
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133)
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‘The Greek tragic poets assert that the
forces which shape or destroy our lives live outside the governance of reason or justice’6
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There could be an argument for the reason that King Lear is still alive is the fact
that he still wants the superfluous
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Regan says to her Father ‘What does one need?’ (2
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263) and Lear answers with super fluidity ‘O, reason not the need! Our barest beggars/ Are in
the poorest thing superfluous’ (2
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64-67)
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‘We that
are young/ Shall never see so much, nor live for so long’ (5
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326- 27)
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3
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The Queen’s death has been said to have been resounding through Cordelia’s
premature death, and almost a consolation to the audience that at least Queen Elizabeth did
not over live the end of her life in pain, and the audience is comforted; ‘the experience of fear
being purged renews us spiritually: we have undergone a process of catharses’8
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6

George Seiner, The Death of Tragedy (London: Faber and Faber, 1961) pp
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119
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38
9
Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, Fourth Edition
(Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2009) p
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7

5  
 

The most dreadful outcome for the central protagonists Roxy, Tom and Ruth, in these
two tragedies is most certainly the agony of continued living rather than the release of death
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Was she worse than the
general run of her race? No
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15)
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The tragedy of these texts are certainly intensified
through the prolonged living of central protagonist, and while Tom lives to be a slave and
King Lear dies with the knowledge that Cordelia has died, the release to be found in death
does not come at the optimum time for either
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’10

                                                                                                                       
10

6  
 

Geoffrey Brereton, Principles of Tragedy (London: Butler and Tanner Ltd
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74

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