The Tragic & Tragedy in Drama

The terms tragedy and tragic get used often in the media recently, especially after the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.. These have become terms synonymous with bad things that have happened to "good people". Yet, there is still the question of what these words really mean, chiefly in regards to the world of drama and literature. Once defined, how do these words effect the notion of what consists of tragic elements in the story and what makes a character tragic.

Stagg (1994) has defined a tragedy as having two basic elements: 1) a hero with enough stature to make his or her suffering significant, and 2) a course of action by the hero that produces enlightenment to his or her situation. Aristotle, who was one of the first great philosophers to be recorded discussing drama, said that a tragedy must "imitate actions arousing fear and pity" (quoted in Adler & Wolfe, 1959, p. 30).

Historically, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex has been the story that defined tragedy as its strengths have been pointed to repeatedly by many notable authors, as well as cited by Aristotle in his Poetics (Lewin, 1997). More recently, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman has been perceived as being a modern tragedy, that is the tragic tale of the loss of one man's dreams for his life and his family. On a surface level, this may seem to be similar to tale of loss told by Oedipus, who also had dreams and goals for himself and his f

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murdered King. And on the murderer this curse I lay (On him and all the partners in his guilt):-- Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness! And for myself, if with my privity He gain admittance to my hearth, I pray The curse I laid on others fall on me (lines 236-249). The curse does fall on Oedipus as he blinds himself in self-defilement and appears to lose everything, although Sophocles has him still alive and being led back into the palace at the end instead of dead and/or banished. However, at this point Oedipus has been humbled and may have attained some wisdom about how the gods work in the lives of mortals. So, he would fulfill Stagg's second criteria, of achieving some type of enlightenment in the course of his ordeal (Stagg, 1994, p. 1). The fate of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, while not the same, can be seen to be similar to that of Oedipus', indeed, Stagg (1994) has called it an "Oedipal ritual" (p. 1). First, Willy Loman is an average man. He has no great stature other than being called "prince" occasionally by the other characters because of his dreams and goals. However, his goals are lofty for they are the great American dream and Willy Loman has become enamored of that dream. So while he, h

Category: Literature - T