Aristotle's Well-Made Play: The Boondock Saints

The Poetics, written by Aristotle in ancient Greece creates an outline of the basis of western drama, a “well made play.” The components of this “well made play” includes the process of the plot, the making of the characters, music, diction, and thought. The Boondock Saints is a film produced in 1999, directed by Troy Duffy starring Willem Dafoe, Norman Reedus, and Sean Patrick Flannery and exhibits the traits of Aristotle’s “well made play.”

The most important aspect of a “well made play” is the plot, which according to Aristotle, “is the first principle, and as it were, the soul” (Greenwald 26) of a drama. A plot is made up of five components: the exposition, the point of attack, the complication or rising action, the climax, and the denouement or falling action. In the exposition of this drama, details about the two main characters

The first type of character, stock characters, are characters that are immediately recognizable and can be considered as stereotypical. In The Boondock Saints, there are a variety of stock characters, mostly as mobsters. Ivan Checkov is a middle ranking mobster that does the higher ranking mobster’s dirty work within the Russian mob. As in stereotype, he is a big burly man with a strong accent. Another stock character appears as a lewd higher ranking mobster that will do all he can to make sure that the big boss is happy. There is also the high ranking “fat man” (The Boondock Saints, 1999) mobster that is in charge, commanding and leading the capo or captains of the mob. The second type of character are the archetypal characters, characters that “speak to all peoples of all times.” (Greenwald 29) Connor and Murphy are archetypal characters as they are the struggling heroes with a mission. Detective Smecker is also an archetypal character as he strives to do the right thing and follow what he believes