"Any people who could endure all of that brutalization and keep together, who could undergo such dismemberment and resuscitate itself, and endure until it could take the initiative in achieving its own freedom is obviously more than the sum of its brutalization. Seen in this perspective, theirs has been one of the great human experiences and one of the great triumphs of the human spirit in modern times. . . . So, let’s not forget that the great tragedies not only treat of negative matters, of violence, brutalities, defeats, but they treat them within a context of man’s will to act, to challenge reality and to snatch triumph from the teeth of destruction." Ralph Ellison