Yay last blog post!
I thought these plays were a good way to end off the semester since they were both easy and enjoyable reads.I did really enjoy Rousseau and actually had fun writing the essay even though it clearly wasn’t my best, but it was nice to have a simple, non philosophical read for a little break.
The tragedy of Henri Christophe is just another story of how too much power leads us away from our true beliefs. Although his original intentions were to free his people from the tyranny of the French, once given power he becomes that which he was trying to liberate his people from in the first place. Although one may have good intentions, power is blinding.
Reading these plays did make me understand Christophe’s life a little better and make me think that Christophe wasn’t so much of a ..meanie? which is what I originally thought while reading Kingdom of this world. I think he just made the mistake that most people with power make, which is to abuse it and in the end he suffers the same fate that people like Kreon, Macbeth and even Lois Griffin from family guy (season 5, episode 17) suffer: downfall. Most of these people wanted something good to come out of their power, but lost track of what they were truly fighting for.
I agree that the plays give us more of a glimpse into Christophe as a person (even though they are fictional and so we can’t necessarily trust their interpretations of him to be accurate), whereas in the Carpentier book he just appears out of nowhere as a tyrant. Here we get some background and some possible reasons for why he ended up acting as he did. Though, of course, what really drove him to act in these ways is still not clear!