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A Look Into Literary Tragedy From The Classics

Tragedy in its broadest sense is not limited to the distinct purpose of classifying a literary work.   Tragedy was created to be much more then just that.   This sense of tragedy is apparent in all walks of life; the constant struggle to push ahead is relentlessly defeated by even the most basic human conditions.   Tragedy was early on classified to most of us as any literary work that has a ‘sad’ ending; such a vague statement put so much into the tragedy category.   However it is quite evident that a depressing closure to a work doesn’t automatically make it a tragedy; they prove to be on a much more complex level.   Tragedy is based on feeling more then convention; the several elements presented later prove to distinguish what is tragedy and what is not.   Three such works, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and Hamlet by William Shakespeare are indications of what really defines a tragedy.
A key aspect of any creditable tragedy is its integration of “reversal of fortune”; the tragic hero must lose something, whether it is material or not.   However, the tragic hero does not have to be of high or elite status; real tragedy occurs with the collapse of emotional stability.   Also a man’s miscalculations of reality are essential to the foundation of a tragedy.   Essentially the tragic hero of a work is respectable; it is flaws or hamartia which causes his downfall.   In addition, the tragedy has the protagonist struggle to amplify their standing; this causes the occurrence of reversal and recognition.   Despite continued disasters which befall on the character, he or she continues to assert that they are undeniably doing the right thing.   The hero also spends most of the time in defiance of the inevitable; their fate.   The real aim of a tragedy is to bring about catharsis, for some emotional output should be emitted from the audience.   This output usually takes the form of pity and fear, which produce the emotional aspect of tragedy since they...