On Seeing, Being Seen, and Bearing Witness to Tragedy

The time is 23:11. The date is 8 June 2025. It has now been more than 11 weeks since aid was last allowed into Gaza. 

Please let that sink in.

There is a pit in my stomach. There has been since 7 October 2023. It feels like nausea, like fear, like deep, clawing, bottomless grief. The grief is different, day to day. Today, the grief is sharp. It has pierced through the dull fog of yesterday’s grief. I did not think I would miss the heavy weight of yesterday so soon but I do not like this grief. Each pang is laced with a bitter reproach, an acrid assignment of blame. This grief demands attention. It demands penance for its having been brought into being. 

As I wrestle with this grief, I turn, by necessity, to the only things I know. To art, to literature. Creating helps. It dulls, at least momentarily, this pain. Perhaps ‘dulls’ is the wrong word. It certainly lets it out.

I had not read in a long time (forgive the abrupt segue – it should make sense soon). Two years, to be precise, almost to the day. By the time I left Cambridge something had been sucked from me. I could not read. I did not want to. And yet, in the last few weeks, I have found myself turning almost instinctively back to the place – the books, the poems, the plays, the texts – that once brought me such solace. There is something almost transcendental in that moment where, unknowingly, unwillingly, even, you begin to see yourself reflected in words written by someone ten or thirty or a thousand years ago. I am beginning to remember why I loved to read. And I am beginning to remember why I stopped.

The works of art and literature I hold dearest are those by which I feel seen. It is another one of those human urges, I think. We all want to be seen, do we not? It makes sense: sight is, for the majority, the primary way in which we experience this strange, beautiful, terrifying world. We all know the adage cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am. I would posit an alternative: I see, and I am seen, therefore I am. It is in being seen that we are realised. It is in seeing that we realise others. 

And sight is very much active. Perhaps our eyes might alight by chance on a penny on the floor (see a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck) – and yet we chose, even if subconsciously, to direct our gaze there. To that precise spot, at that one moment, to see that penny. We are not omniscient beings, we cannot see all, know all. I have also learnt that we cannot, try as we might, fix all. Often one cannot fix anything, other than perhaps themselves. 

As I choose, over and over again, to turn my eyes toward Gaza, I feel some grief-stricken part of myself rebelling. I do not want to look. I do not want to see. I do not want to know another moment of this tragedy. As I thought about this today, a moment from Euripides’ The Bacchae crept across the uneven floor of the entity I understand to be my mind. 

Cadmus: Gaze on it and be absolutely sure.

Agave: I see it – the greatest anguish – and I am utterly wretched' (Bacchae, 1281-2).

Forgive me if I explain, briefly, the context. I will try to be concise. (I imagine I will not be).

This moment from Euripides’ The Bacchae is one of dreadful recognition. Driven mad by Dionysus, Agave has murdered her own son, and stands, at the denouement, holding his mutilated head in her arms. Commanded by her father, Cadmus, to ‘gaze on it’, Agave is overcome with horror at the sight – she is ‘utterly wretched’. This order reveals a tenet of tragedy – that of the fundamental human need for our suffering to be perceived. 

I would, if you'll indulge me, pause on that statement for a moment. The fundamental human need for our suffering to be perceived. Indeed, tragic drama stages suffering in front of witnesses precisely because pain demands witness.

To remain with the Greeks for a moment – for the Greeks are second to none when it comes to tragedy – I think it is fair to say that on the level of both the audience of and the characters within these tragedies, the act of watching, or witnessing, is of paramount importance. (To this end, the Greek derivation of theatre quite literally means ‘the place of seeing’). As we (the audience, the reader, the horrified spectator held captive by some morning news channel or another) step into this role of witness, we too become emotionally, visually, and even physically embroiled in the tragedy we are watching. Thus to watch tragedy is to experience anguish, because to see something is to experience it, in a way. And with understanding comes empathy, with empathy, horror, with horror, grief, and so on and so forth until, eventually, a choice arises. Do we keep watching? Do we look away? 

I said earlier that where we direct our gaze is a question of the utmost importance. I cannot emphasise this enough.

Time and again throughout the classical tragedies, one finds the command to look. In the Hecuba, the chorus leader commands Hecuba that she ‘must look on as the girl [her daughter, Polyxena] falls bloodied before the tomb’ (note the forceful imperative ‘must’ – particularly jarring). Hecuba’s response confirms the anguish of seeing tragedy – ‘ah me, what unhappiness is mine!’, she cries, ‘what shall I utter, what sound, what cry of lamentation?’ . Although she has not yet seen her daughter’s body, the very thought of witnessing this tragedy is sufficiently devastating to reduce her to heaving sobs and keening laments. This moment further reveals the anguish of watching tragedy, as we see that in the face of such despair Hecuba’s ability to express her pain in words breaks down; she no longer knows what she can ‘utter’, or what ‘sound[s]’ or ‘cr[ies]’ she can make. The work of Elaine Scarry comes to mind here, particularly her excellent discussion of that desperate phenomenon whereby pain resists linguistic representation:

‘Physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned.’

Hecuba’s pain is such that she cannot express it – perhaps it fundamentally cannot be expressed – in words. She does not ask what words she might speak, but rather what sounds and cries one could possibly utter in response to such tragedy. As Scarry states, ‘there is no language for pain’. 

I have been grappling with this problem, this limitation of language, this inability to express even an ounce of the pain I feel in witnessing the plight of the Palestinian people. And seeing is all too easy in this day and age of instantaneous communication. We are watching a genocide, in full colour high definition, live-streamed from our phones. Perhaps we were not meant to see so much. Perhaps we need to.

I will take the liberty of returning to Euripides to illustrate this point.

There is also the sense in the Hecuba that there is something similarly, if not quite equally, painful and traumatic in the witnessing of pain, as well as the primary experiencing of it. Hecuba’s daughter, Polyxena, condemned to die, submits to her fate with a gentle, heartbreaking acquiescence. Hecuba, however, cannot condone this – cannot bear to accept this – and reflexively mourns for herself at the very same moment she mourns for her daughter: ‘pitiable are you, my child, but I am in misery!’. More theory – forgive me – but here my thoughts turn to Pietro Pucci. The reading I have just made stands entirely in opposition to Pucci’s assertion that ‘the pitier experiences grief only through his imagination … in actuality he is exempt from the pains he is sympathetically recording from others’. To this, I would suggest that Pucci underestimates the power of both vision and the imagination to create a lasting impression in the mind; indeed, Hecuba herself affirms this notion as she declares that ‘I could not, to be sure, wipe from my mind what has befallen you’. She cannot wipe it – it is a stain, a blemish, a moment so painful it scars the tissue of her memories indelibly. Whilst Pucci conceives of the watcher of tragedy as experiencing it solely through 'the linguistic (or visual) sign’, I would rather suggest that traumatic events have a particular power to evoke and instil emotions in onlookers so potent that they mimic (though not, of course, recreate) the emotions experienced by those directly involved in these acts of tragedy. If I may, the application of medieval optical theory is particularly interesting here. Discussing various lines of thought on this topic, Sarah Stanbury takes note of Grosseteste’s theory of visual species. Grosseteste posited that sight consisted of the visual species in the eye joining with an emanation from the object being viewed, thus ensuring ‘mechanical linkages between the viewer and the object of his or her gaze’. The medieval understanding of the act of looking, Stanbury concludes, is that ‘gazing is a direct kind of physical sensation, altering the eye and also altering the object seen’. Vision, therefore, is almost a form of touch. We are intimately and undeniably touched by that which we see with our eyes. As per Grosseteste, the sight produces an emanation of sorts, the visual species in the eye combine with this object, and a relationship – a physical relationship – results between the viewer and that which is being viewed. Whilst this is now, of course, obsolete medical discourse, it does raise interesting questions about the nature of sight, experience, and how they interact. This theory corroborates the idea that to see something is to experience it, even if we are watching the experience happen to someone else. 

Another way in which the anguish of tragedy functions is that, in some cases, the pain is of such intensity that those experiencing it must, in various ways, separate themselves from it at the very moment they are either witnessing or experiencing it. I see this in myself, in that urge to turn off the phone, to turn over the news, to bury my head in my pillow and scream, uselessly, at the mindless brutality of it all. We see this also in Euripides’ the Medea, at the moment where Medea prepares to murder her own children. Recognising (perhaps subconsciously) that to kill her children is a deed almost unbearable, Medea separates herself – ‘I’ – from the parts of her that desire and will commit the murder. ‘I shall not weaken my hand’, she declares at one point, in a statement that separates her, ‘I’, from the hand that will actually carry out the deed. Similarly, she claims that ‘the one who gave them birth must kill them’, using the vague pronoun of ‘one’ rather than admitting that it is she herself who will ultimately do it. To witness herself commit this crime is unbearable; instead, her hand functions in synecdoche for the separated part of herself which is not the ‘I’, or egoic self, and is instead ruled by her anger and desire for revenge – her kardia. (In a direct appeal to her kardia, Medea cries ‘do not, my angry heart, do not do these things!’). In separating herself so, Medea is able to pity the part of her that becomes witness to the crime, and simultaneously exhort the other part of her to commit it. Do we not do the same? Do we not split ourselves in two, rending the whole apart so that we do not have to witness tragedy in its entirety? Too much, a part of me cries, too much to bear. T.S. Eliot (my favourite writer) felt this too, articulating it in a line I will forever wish had been mine – ‘humankind cannot bear very much reality’. It is true. I have not yet found a way to hold these feelings. I am trying, though.

I have said twice now that where we direct our gaze is a powerful choice. To look away is simpler, easier – it hurts less. Please do not take this as veiled criticism. Some things are too much to bear. I do not blame anyone for looking away. I am trying not to blame myself. And yet silence is deadlier than drones, deadlier than bombs, deadlier even than that cruellest and most cowardly of weapons, starvation. It is in silence that evil operates, skirting around the fringes of that which cannot be spoken. The unspeakable. We must try, though. Try to look, try to speak. Scarry said there is no language for pain. Perhaps that is true – perhaps there are no words that can do justice to the suffering to which we are currently bearing witness. And yet choose to look we must. 

As I type these words, a small, unarmed, civilian vessel named the Madleen is sailing for the Gaza Strip. The most recent update from the BBC put the Madleen 160 nautical miles from the Gaza Strip five hours ago (at 20:17 08/06/25). I feel sick. Some small, selfish part of me wishes I didn’t. A much larger and louder part insists that I must, and is grateful that I am. My very soul aches for the people aboard that ship, as it does for the Gazans – for those gone too soon, for those still alive to bear this insurmountable grief. I am terrified. I cannot distract myself, I cannot look away. But I do not think I should. 

When we see, we understand. When we understand, we feel. When we feel, at some point, we are given a choice. To look, or not to look. To act, or not to act. It is so much easier to look away. I simply ask that you try not to. I hope very much this piece does not come from my ego. I do not believe this to be performative – at the very least, I hope dearly that it is not. Writing this does nothing for the Palestinians; I am under no illusions as to that fact. And yet write I must. These words on this page bear witness to the needless tragedy that is unfolding at this very moment half a world away. It might as well be a universe away. It might as well be next door. We are all human. We are all Palestinian. This senseless violence must end. Choose to look. Choose to see. Because in seeing, in witnessing, in feeling this shared grief, we stand in community. Turn your eyes towards Gaza. Bear witness. Do not let the world look away. 

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Molly Dewar is a writer, editor, graphic designer, maker of stuff, reluctant Cambridge grad, and proud Creative Director of Scribbled. She hesitates to call herself an artist — and certainly not a writer — but, for better or worse, she can’t seem to shake the primordial urge to create. She makes things that make her feel, in hopes of making other people feel too.You can find her on Instagram as @mollydewardesign, and on Substack as @mollydewar.