When tragedies strike a person’s true character is tested. Sometimes a person is able to learn from these unfortunate events and sometimes it can bring the worst in people. In The Thousand and One Nights, King Shahrayar finds out that his wife has betrayed him by having an affair. Upon hearing this news King Shahrayar was furious. Thereafter, the king began acting irrationally. To save himself from the “wickedness and cunning of women” (B,413), King Shahrayar decided to marry a woman, sleep with her and have her killed the next morning. He believed that “there is not a single chaste women anywhere on the entire face of the earth” (B, 413), and instead of punishing the one women who betrayed him, he decides to punish all women. He overcame his emotional tragedy by punishing the entire female race. From his killings he hoped to achieve satisfaction.
In the NY Times article “An Israeli novelist writes of pain, private and public” by Ethan Bronner, David Grossman deals with his tragedy differently. In 2005, Grossman lost his son in combat in the Lebanon War. Grossman’s whole world was shattered. He was lost and confused as to how to go on with his life. The answers to his confusion came in his writings. In the article, Grossman says ” writing is my home, it was a place where I again recognized myself”. Instead of becoming bitter and punishing the world around him, he coped with his tragedy by writing. He was able to translate his pained emotions into a great novel.
