I recently finished the Wilson translation of
The Iliad, and one of the points she made in the translator's notes was the different words for different types of anger, starting with one that opens the poem:
The word “mēnis” is elsewhere used of the anger of gods, not humans: Only the fury of Achilles, the mortal son of a goddess, is deadly enough in its consequences, for his own side as well as for the enemy, to qualify as “wrath,” not merely “anger.” “...Mēnis” is not ordinary anger or normal human rage. Angry men in battle kill a few other men, if they are skillful, brave and lucky. Only divinely backed “wrath” could cause the level of destruction that Achilles brings about.... (
Source)
The conclusion of her full introduction comes to mind with this discussion, on the higher purpose of drama and storytelling in general. Basic aspects of the human condition are universal, and the world we inhabit is complex and, at times, inexplicable. Stories allow use to explore events and emotions in a safe way, paradoxically by heightening them beyond the everyday context, and conforming them to structures of cause and effect, thematic and narrative unity. It let's us perceive life in a way that has meaning, and not just as a bunch of stuff that keeps happening one thing after another. This distinction doesn't apply quite so much in the age of serialization, but I once heard the fundamental difference between a movie and a television show is a movie will generally be about the most important event in the main character's life, while a TV show is necessarily less transformative to its main character because it's about something that happens to them about two dozen times a year, over and over again. Jodie Foster in
Silence of the Lambs is going to go through a lot more solving a crime than David Caruso in a random episode of
CSI: Miami.
Whether it was effective or not is debatable, and will vary with the critic and the audience, the events of
The Acolyte were meant to be emotionally epic in scale. "Apocalyptic" might even be the better term, with its sense of "revelation." While it would ideally elicit sympathy and pathos and could be analogized (loosely!) to events in your own life, I don't get how you can look at it and go, "This story of mistaken identity, murder, hidden failure festering into disaster, revenge, betrayal, and wrath is pretty everyday stuff, I don't see how this could be taken as unusually affecting for the people involved." A lady split a baby in two, turned into a smoke monster, and got stabbed by a man who then adopted her kid! This is not "For me, it was Tuesday"-level stuff.
