A Question of Righteousness

WATCH: I Am Not Your Negro: documentary of James Baldwin
Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart: documentary of Lorraine Hansberry

In life, our struggle for justice can be clouded by our own ambitions. In literature, the classic figure of a tragic hero embodies this struggle between what one perceives is righteousness, but what others might perceive as self-serving, pride or arrogance.

Sidney Poitier as Walter Younger

Consider Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet. He agrees to marry the lovers so that the “rancor” between these warring Mafioso families will be turned “to pure love” (2.3.99). And as an intelligent priest, he believes that the power of God’s love will certainly overcome hatred. But if his beliefs are not misguided, his actions certainly are, as he gives Juliet a potion to make her seem dead to her parents and Paris. His act of secretly marrying Romeo and Juliet results in five deaths by the end of the play.

Can we ever be certain that our best-intended actions will effect the results that we believe are noble? Will our judgement be clouded by our own desires, or as the Greeks called it, our hamartia: the “fatal flaw” in our human character that causes us not to see the damage we do?

The core human issues expressed in tragedy often can give us means and courage to survive the misery that we ourselves inevitably cause in our lives. We learn to understand and forgive the human flaws that cause us to err in judgment, sometimes catastrophically.  

Classical tragedy is often a great source of comfort for prisoners, politicians, moral leaders and soldiers – as well as for the rest of us. It is important to remember that tragedy reveals that there is no easy answer to life’s hardest questions and finding moral ground is often not simple. Tragic heroes make choices that seem logical at the time, though through weakness and lack of foresight these choices often backfire.

The paradox is that even in failure there is nobility in the human struggle to live honorably within our clouded perception, and that of this struggle, wisdom comes, always painfully, in the acceptance and understanding of our humanity, and of our place in the world: imperfect, flawed, mortal, yet blessed with joy, love, hope—and endurance.

Antigone, by Sophocles

Is it noble to go against your religion and family if it will save many people from death and war? Or do you honor your religion and favor your family members, even if it will cause destruction?  Should you commit a sin to save your own life, or do you follow your religion if it means not only your death, but the deaths of family members as well?

These are the unanswerable questions at the heart of the ancient Greek play, Antigone. While it might be easy to understand the position Antigone holds to bury her traitorous brother and honor her religion when the play begins, as the danger of her actions cascade onto her sister and her fiancé, Haemon – and indeed spread to her homeland, she herself questions if she may have been wrong. Is she more interested in self-glory than honor? Would not the gods, as her sister Ismene says, forgive her? Would not the gods, as Creon claims, condemn her brother Polyneices for attacking his own city with a foreign army?

Are Creon’s insecurities and fears of anarchy unfounded as he insists on proving his power by refusing to free Antigone, his own niece, and condemns her to death? Fear is a powerfully blinding force, especially in politics. As he attempts to secure peace, is Creon falling victim to his own hamartia?

A famous film version of Antigone, starring Irene Papas, was released in 1961, the same year a famous film version of A Raisin in the Sun was released. This decade of course, is noted for social justice movements.

A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry

This timeless American classic by Lorraine Hansberry is not a classical tragedy in that Walter and the Younger family are not brought down by Walter’s error in judgment. Rather, he learns that honor is not something that can be purchased, and in fact, true honor comes with acknowledging your own errors and being able to rise above them.

But the play is more than a simple family drama of what to do with the life insurance money Walter’s father bled and suffered for. He and Mama came North in the Great Migration, hoping for simple freedom. But in the North, the Youngers are bound in their poverty by quiet racial injustice that prohibits Walter, Ruth and Mama from rising above their jobs as servants to wealthy white people. Beneatha’s dream of becoming a doctor is thought of as unrealistic, idealistic, and a waste of precious resources. The white neighborhood where they purchase a home is so unwelcoming that the people there form a committee to pay them not to move in. Despair drives Ruth to seek an abortion rather than have hope that they will find a way to support another child. Walter, desperate to break free of poverty and racial disparagement, believes that the only way he can get a license to open his own liquor store and become his own boss, is by graft.  

New Neighbors, by Norman Rockwell

Hansberry’s own father fought the very same kind of housing discrimination in Chicago when the family was refused occupancy in an all-white neighborhood. His lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court, and the case, Hansberry v. Lee was ruled in his favor. Although Lorraine Hansberry’s life was cut short by cancer, she lived to win accolades and awards for A Raisin in the Sun, which since her death, has seen many revivals on Broadway – and three film versions. The first, with Sidney Poitier, won first prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961. Another version stars Danny Glover and the third, has Sean “Puffy” Combs as Walter. Today the play is being staged in Stockholm, Sweden the cast consisting of Afro-Swedes.  

Hansberry herself faced discrimination not only as an African American woman. During the time she was writing, she needed to hide her homosexuality in order to work and live without threat to her life. In the 1950’s in the United States, the fight for gender equality and gay rights was in its infancy. The stories of the heroes struggling against this injustice have only begun to be told.