Of all the types of stories humans tell, many of the most deeply affecting and most remembered belong to the genre of tragedy.

            As one student has said, “genre is humanity’s attempt to organize our entertainment,” just as we organize and classify everything else (S.C. 2004). There are different ways of breaking literature down into genres. For instance, we could define a work by its format (e.g. novel, short story, ballad, play, etc.) or by representation strategy (e.g. via a narrator, through dialogue, or a combination of the two). And of course, in today’s world of highly conventionalized entertainment, we frequently describe our stories by the set of publishers or studio guidelines they follow, such as science fiction, mystery, thriller, romantic comedy, horror, etc. Northrop Frye has claimed that all plotlines, regardless of how they fit in these other classification systems, can be placed into one of four categories (or a combination of them): tragedy, comedy, romance, or satire.

            While it is hard to definitively label any genre as the “greatest,” a strong case can be made for tragedy’s preeminence. Tragedy possesses a gravitas that other genres generally do not have. This is partly because, when done well, it evokes two of our most primal and powerful emotions: pity and fear. Also, however, tragedy tends to be necessarily more complex, avoiding simple answers and portraying its characters as mixed, rather than strictly good or evil; tragedy does not usually have heroes, villains, or victims, or at least not in their pure archetypal forms. There are no simple answers, and in this way the art imitates life.

            Comedy deals with the low or trivial; tragedy, with something of significance. For example, the events in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, even though they include some persons of relative importance, can hardly be seen as a threat to Athens or the world at large. In fact, toward the end, the whole fantastic part of the play is dismissed as having possibly been a dream (at the whim of the audience). Shakespeare’s Hamlet storyline, however, affects the rulership of a nation. Even more drastically, the title character’s decisions and fate in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex directly affects the individual lives of all Thebans, and are of importance to the gods. In more modern tragedies, the characters are often fairly common people, but, as in O’neill’s Desire Under the Elms, there are still consequences for the land or society on some scale.

            The genre of romance is closer in scope to tragedy, in that it too can deal with significant elements. However, the role of romantic stories is to inspire, encourage, and entertain, while tragedies are cautionary tales, as well as explorations of the darker side of human nature. Historically, the great tragedies have mostly been written in periods of challenge or cultural triumph, accompanying the rise of Athens or England, for instance. They remind us that, however dominant we become, we are still susceptible to defeat or mistakes. Many tragedies explicitly deal with great leaders enjoying enormous success, who nonetheless meet tragic ends. A few examples of this that come readily to mind are Julius Caesar, Othello, and Oedipus Rex, just to name a handful.

            Tragedy is great because the lessons it can teach are not diluted by deus ex machina happy endings, but the problem is left in its basic form and the potential consequences are fully shown. It is up to the reader or audience to find out what went wrong, where it went wrong, and how/if it could have been fixed, and we always are more appreciative (and mindful) of the things we have to work for. [BL]