Zimmermann

EN 2322

Everyman and Freytag’s Pyramid

Gustav Freytag concluded that five act tragedies follow a specific structure. If blindly followed, structuralist theories force patterns on literature, discarding variations. They limit literature, forcing it into models that are static and prescriptive. Nevertheless, such structures often provide a way of approaching parts of piece of literature, disassembling it for analysis.

Freytag’s Pyramid

• Inciting Moment: the event that sets the action of the play into movement.
• Exposition: the introduction material that creates the tone, gives the setting, introduces the characters.
• Rising Action (Complication):The opposing groups come into opposition. The hero is usually gaining power.
• Climax (Crisis): the turning point of the action. It is the moment at which the rising action turns and becomes the falling action.
• Reversal: The change in fortune of the protagonist.
• Falling Action: The failing fortunes of the hero following the climax of a tragedy.
• Catastrophe: The conclusion of a play, a tragedy. It ends the conflict of the play. The actions of the climax are resolved.
• Moment of Last Suspense

Morality plays deliver sermons on a single moral issue in the form of a narrative, a drama; they are typically allegories—a narrative presenting abstractions in the form of characters and places. In this sense, the plays were homiletic, serving as a form of religious instruction. They gained popularity in the 14^th century and remained so, until Puritans began banning dramas.

• Humor in the play is developed through dramatic irony—the audience already knows and sees what Everyman fails to understand. The humor makes the audience less resistant to the message of the play and engenders sympathy for the main character and his struggles.
• Avarice is condemned. His goods are hoarded; he is not criticized for spending money.

Everyman

Some scholars have argued that Everyman is an inverted or reversed tragedy. Track the events of the play to prove that the Freytag’s Pyramid is inverted in the play.

• What is the sermon? What is the moral issue on which the play is based?