Jack as tragic hero

crazy_4_alias Posted on May 19 2003, 09:12 PM
It could be almost anyone who had something to lose and lost it.
I agree. Although she hasn't lost Sydney or Jack forever, IMHO...she has paid a price over the years. She has been not without tears during the interaction between herself and Sydney. In ADT the look she gave Jack after leaving the van was significant.
But equally significant were the words to Sydney: "My love for you, for your father, was not contrived!" I wonder if Sydney believed it, or if she told Jack what Irina had said. Jack too also said "--her methods loathsome, but she is not without feeling."
SOooo perhaps there is still hope that the family bond, now broken, will somehow be repaired in the future. Perhaps when the Prophecy takes place or afterwards...who knows...except JJ and his writers. :Ph34r:
 
lenafan said:
crazy_4_alias Posted on May 19 2003, 09:12 PM
It could be almost anyone who had something to lose and lost it.
I agree. . .
But equally significant were the words to Sydney: "My love for you, for your father, was not contrived!" I wonder if Sydney believed it, or if she told Jack what Irina had said. Jack too also said "--her methods loathsome, but she is not without feeling."
. . .
We don't have the information to tell whether Irina fits the definition or not. For one thing, we can't know that Irina started out in a "noble" position to fall from (in fact, her original mission makes it less likely). Also, the suggestion is that what she has "lost" was through choice or deliberate sacrifice, not through a fall from grace or tragedy. Can we say that her punishment exceeds the scope of her crimes? The suggested scope of her crimes is stupendous.

Does the fact (if we believe it, and I tend to) that Irina loves Jack and Sydney make her character more tragic? Not necessarily. It does, however, make her more sympathetic.

Regarding the "something to lose/lost it" test: do we identify with the villain when he is vanquished (generally speaking*)? He has something to lose and has lost it. No, that by itself does not define a tragic hero.
;)

* OK, at times I've been known to identify with the villain, but then I'm subversive . . .
 
verdantheart Posted on May 20 2003, 09:16 AM
We don't have the information to tell whether Irina fits the definition or not

And therein lies the problem. Not enough information. Snippets here and there -- i.e. "I was a fool to think that any ideology could come before my daughter."

Irina, we know, was a KGB agent. Just as Sydney now is a CIA agent. She was doing a job for her country as Sydney is doing for hers. Vaughn said "when she got through with my father, he could only be identified by his dental records." When did she do this? It sounds like he was tortured. So if she was married to Jack, then raising Sydney, when did she do this? OR is this something that happened after she left the US. Still we are led to believe she did these killings etc while married to Jack!

THEN when she left the US, she says she was thrown into prison (just as Jack was) for six months. After her release what happened to Irina? We are given no information period about the next few years until about 1991 when the KGB was disbanded and eventually ended up as two services: FSB internal security and SVR external (foreign) security. We are told that the next ten years she spent heading up a large crime cartel that obviously had to make a lot money. She was also pursuing the Rambaldi artifacts along with other secret organizations.

HOW BAD is she? Yes, I know she kills without worrying about the consequences. They showed us that part of her.
But she was also raised in the USSR during the time of Joseph Stalin and his predessors who had no religion or faith. So "thou shalt not kill." was not on her reading list or was it on any other KGB agent's.

OK so I'm an incurably romantic, but the writers have left us with so little information about her. Of course, I have a bit of analytical pragmatism in me too. Loose ends kind of irritate me. :angry:

So the information I have about Irina is so sparse, I made up my own KGB, FBI files about her. I need an anchor to use when I did my own fiction. :blush: And maybe that's what the writers intended. Speculation that breeds even more speculation, which ends up adding new fans to Alias.... :cool:
 
lenafan said:
THEN when she left the US, she says she was thrown into prison (just as Jack was) for six months. After her release what happened to Irina? We are given no information period about the next few years until about 1991 when the KGB was disbanded and eventually ended up as two services: FSB internal security and SVR external (foreign) security. We are told that the next ten years she spent heading up a large crime cartel that obviously had to make a lot money. She was also pursuing the Rambaldi artifacts along with other secret organizations.
Certainly building up your own organization from almost nothing takes time. 10 years is little enough time to do that!

HOW BAD is she? Yes, I know she kills without worrying about the consequences. They showed us that part of her.
But she was also raised in the USSR during the time of Joseph Stalin and his predessors who had no religion or faith.  So "thou shalt not kill." was not on her reading list or was it on any other KGB agent's.
No? Well, I'd think that she had to know something about American values, including the "Thou shalt not kill" part, if only to pretend to fit in . . . :lol: You, as many others seem to be doing, are asking me to forgive Irina for murder upon murder because she was trained to do so? She's an intelligent woman who thinks for herself, not a programmed automaton. She had time to get to know Jack and learn another way of looking at and doing things. However, she obviously thinks her way is better.
;)
 
I think Irina left Jack in Panama because she thought she had a better idea of how to catch Sloane and get Syd to leave the spy business "while she still can," as she put it. There seem to be indications that she later realized that she made a horrible mistake; she basically outsmarted herself. Now it's too late. She threw away the only realistic chance she might have had to mend fences with her family. I think that if she had stuck with Jack's plan in Panama, they would have stood a decent chance of catching Sloane, even with Sark throwing a monkey wrench into things; and Sloane would be sitting in prison right now. Under those circumstances, Irina might have even been able to finagle a pardon for herself by now. Instead, she went her own way -- again -- and now she has to live with the consequences.
 
Ophelia said:
There seem to be indications that she later realized that she made a horrible mistake; she basically outsmarted herself.
And what are those?
;)
 
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