A note about the term: Tragedy doesn’t just mean a sad story. No, a tragedy -- in the literary sense -- is a narrative that traces a character's plunge from prosperity to ruin due to some fatal flaw, what the Greeks called hamartia. And it didn’t die with Shakespeare, although current incarnations do look a bit different. Today’s tragedians often work in genre, eschewing fractious royals for bloody feuds over a secret windfall (Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan) or an ex-con with a gun in his hand and murder in his heart (Naguib Mahfouz’s The Thief and the Dogs) or a hypochondriac afraid of his own bones (Ray Bradbury’s "Skeleton").
Of course, what makes the entire tragic enterprise work is that the inhabitants of its tales don’t develop. They proceed along as they always have and reap the whirlwind in return. Their bent constancy propels both plot and theme. Or if they experience some internal shift, it’s for the worst, an intensification of the extant error. A little change would do them good. That is exactly why the author must avoid it.
(Picture: CC 2009 by Stefanvds(.com))
2 comments:
I'd never thought of the fact that the characters don't develop in a tragedy. What an insightful post.
Jessica @ The Bluestocking Society
Thanks! Actually, I think that some do -- they just get worse. (Think of MacBeth.) But a lot of them simply muddle along in their old sins and must pay the piper by the end.
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