Martha Nussbaum’s Democratizing Citizenship and the Narrative Imagination explores many interesting ideas about literature. And how it affects our society and the morals we hold. Due to my interest in theatre I found her section on how tragic plays can help young people develop a sense of right from wrong as well as aid them in developing both empathy and sympathy. Nussbaum talks about how tragedies can teach young people about the bad things that may happen in life. She also talks about the “sympathies of the spectator” and how this teaches people empathy. To some extent I do agree with her theories in that drama can be a useful way to spread ideas to a large group of people, as well as use it as a teaching device. However I do believe that there are other ore effective ways of teaching young people morals many people just watch theatre and don’t always take away the main message. Also there are many people in the world who have no interest in the theatre or have not been exposed to it and still posses’ strong morals and a sense of empathy. Also often theatre can be used as a political vehicle, therefore the morals that young people learn in these dramas may not reflect the morals held by their society or culture. There are also many people in this world who are unable to display empathy due to social disorders, so no matter how much theatre they are exposed to they will still be unable to feel sympathy. Nussbaum does admit that literature is not transformative when used by itself, and often time’s literature can be the cause of oppression in our society. This all being said I do enjoy the idea that drama can put someone in the place of another individual who has completely different experiences and then build an understanding of another class of people. This can be a step in ending the class divide. Many forms of theater were created for this specific goal in mind for instance Morality theatre which was popular in the medieval century its main goal was to teach a religious moral from the bible to the general populace. Drama was used because the majority of people were illiterate and therefore unable to read the bible. This is a case of theatre effectively teaching people morality however it is also extremely manipulative. Which brings me back to my earlier point that although theatre can teach it is just as biased towards a political or religious agenda we should not trust in it completely to show our young people right from wrong. In conclusion while Nussbaum does say that literature must be used in tandem with another technique to teach young people empathy and morals, I feel she puts too much emphasizes on the good things that theatre can do opposed to how manipulative it can be.
Nassbaum
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