Sorry for the tardy post! Answer this one first.

I do not think that death is the key to tragedy, although, for certain individuals it may be the worst. Tragedy is so personal and individually defined that trying to find a general definition seems hopeless. From the other posts, it seems that many people connect tragedy with individuals, but could it be an action?
I personally do not define anything in my life as tragic. This term seems to be reserved for the extremes, the polar ends of hopelessness. Also, I tend to associate tragedy with dramatics, perhaps that is the theatre half of my knowledge.
The element of surprise, or unexpectedness does have a role in tragedy. When you are emotionally vulnerable without even knowing it, that could lead to an emotionally scarring tragedy. So I am not denying that tragedy exists, but I tend not to refer to anything in my life as such.
Somewhere deep down it feels as though this is all a trap set up by Mr. Parris. He knows that looking back on this definition in a month will force me to realize my naïve self. The converstation about self started out the exact same way…

Like many people have already said, I also think tragedy is deeply mired in death.  When I think of the word "tragedy" I immediately think of Shakespeare's tragedies. In all of them, many if not most of the characters end up dying by the end of the play.  Just speaking of the ones I've actually seen (Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Hamlet) each "tragedy" begins with some conflict which starts the killing, and then escalates into all the characters either killing each other or otherwise being affected by all the killing.  Prime example: Macbeth.  How many characters are even still alive at the end?  Not many, that I remember.  Therefore, I also agree with all those that have noted that "tragedy" has something to do with the number of people involved.  I believe that for something to be categorized as a "tragedy" it has to be truly awful - something that is not only thoroughly unfortunate but also something that affects lots of people.  Of course that's still rather vague.  I guess a tragedy would be something that would be widely regarded as a terribly sad catastrophe.   

Tragedies stand out as rarities in the lives of most people. Bad things, however, are much more common in life. It is much more passive of a person to call an occurrence “bad” and the label ends up sounding flippant and easily brushed off. It is easy for a person to call their day bad and to have slight pseudo-remorse come their way than it is for a person to truly feel something is tragic. Tragedies call for a much more energetic form of sympathy; people must convince the post-tragedy survivor that they are truly remorseful. Because the latter takes much more energy to convey, people will often stay with “bad” things. Not often is something tragic, and when it is it means much more of an energy input for all people involved. Now, I realize this may sound bad but think of the recent tragedy in the Philippines. This was indeed a tragedy and called for much more energy. The energy went to support those facing challenges in their destruction. It wasn’t “bad” but instead was tragic and thus required more energy from other people in order to get through it.

A lot has been said about tragedy already. I have nothing to add.

Just kidding. I have way too much to add.

But first let’s look at what has already been said. I think the most common threads of this, well, thread are the ideas that tragedy is: something that was preventable, something lost forever, death/inability to ignore mortality, unexpectedness, and dependent upon individual perspective. In evaluating these tragedies, let’s look at the common examples we’ve cited that seem to be accepted tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the Sandy Hook shooting, the Typhoon in the Philippines/general natural disasters, deaths (with various qualifiers attached), and car accidents/misfortune befalling a close friend/family member.

Initially, I like the idea that a tragedy is seen as more “tragic” than a mundanely bad event because it could have been prevented. But if we take on this definition, natural disasters are not tragedies. And yet that feels wrong. How could you argue that these hugely detrimental storms and tsunamis of recent years are not tragedies? We’ll come back to this in a little while.

Now let’s look at the idea of tragedy in regards to death or some huge physical harm. As others have discussed, this definition limits tragedies to the physical unless you include the “death” of a self or the loss of sanity. But even with that broader definition, the line between “bad” and “tragic” remains hazy. If you die, it’s tragic. A paper cut is not. If you fall off of a hiking trail and sprain an ankle, is it tragic? What if you broke both legs? Essentially, unless there is some way of quantifying physical, emotional, and psychological harm, that definition is going to be ambiguous.

That brings us to eternal loss. Yet even that isn’t a hard-line definition. Eternal loss of life is undeniably tragic. So is eternal loss of an opportunity, like, as Sheridan brought up, the “loss” of the man’s opportunity to live his life “alive” and with a full self. This definition, though, means that the eternal loss of, say, 20/20 vision, or the eternal loss of a pet fish, is tragic. To avoid this, you could say that it must be the eternal loss of something you were attached to, but how do you determine attachment?

It is this line of reasoning—the question of how to determine a personal emotion like attachment—that leads to my definition of tragedy. How do we define attachment? The easiest way might be to think about losing something. Would you be sad, or would it bring you to tears? Which just brings us back to: is it bad, or tragic?

This personal component leads to the concept of defining tragedy based on individual perspective, as a few have already brought up. I agree that there is a personal aspect, but I would attach even more specificity to this.

Take a post-modern viewpoint (I’m a pomo critic) suggesting that language is variable (the word tragic certainly seems to be) and thus that the use of language to define truth is really just an attempt to “force” your truth—your language/way of thinking about something—onto someone else. (That’s a little oversimplified, but this is already too long.) But what would the word “tragedy” try to force you to think? It’s already accepted that any tragedy is mundanely bad and more, so it’s not trying to convince you of the general negativity of something.

Answering this question leads to my definition of tragedy. “Tragedy,” in my opinion, could be an attempt to forcedly elicit sympathy for misfortune. It doesn’t have to come with malicious intent, but when we call hurricanes a tragedy, we want the listener to feel sympathy for the victims. And the reason we would use tragedy to try and elicit sympathy is…if tragedy is what we personally call anything that actually elicits sympathy.

In turn, that gives us the specificity to attach to the concept of “individual perspective.” Something mundanely bad is something you acknowledge as bad and try and feel a bit of regret or anger or a tiny bit of sorrow, and then move on with your life. This sorrow or anger is an action we undertake if we understand the “bad” in something. Let’s say your pet fish died. It’s not a tragedy if you only feel bad because, well, death, and it’s sorta sad to see it die, but it’s not as if you ever personally connected with that fish. Conversely, a tragedy is something that elicits emotion as reaction. You hear about the Sandy Hook shooting and instinctively feel sad. You hear about a loved one’s sudden death and instinctively start crying. There is no separation between the event and the emotion.

(The question of attachment is determined the same way. If you lost something, would you realize you should act sadly because you lost or misplaced it, or would you react sadly without even considering the concept of loss, just that you no longer have something and miss it dearly? The reaction is the true attachment, I believe.)

So when we say a hurricane is tragic, what do we mean? Is it? This varies based on this personal definition. If you lived on the New Jersey coastline during Hurricane Sandy, the storm damage itself makes you feel terrible. But if you lived on the West Coast and you say it’s tragic, you either mean that a) it’s tragic, as in, you want other people to agree and feel sad and donate money to relief efforts (which is in no way a bad result even if it feels a little manipulative) or b) you know someone on the coast, or have seen the story so well told through the media that you actually feel sorrow, as an emotional reaction. Sorrow as a reaction is sadness naturally occurring, whereas sorrow as an action is sadness that you feel only because you think you should (because it’s culturally accepted, because the media is telling you to feel sad*, or because you anticipated an event would be sad even before it happened, etc). You “act” the sorrow or consciously choose to feel sad, whereas “reacting” with sorrow is an unconscious response.

*I don't mean that you shouldn't feel sorrow for those in the Philippines just because you only see the tragedy secondhand. I'm simply talking about the difference between the media saying "x number of people have died, let's feel bad" "Okay, yeah, I can make myself feel bad" and you finally grasping the number of deaths or seeing the destruction, which would then elicit sorrow as a reaction.

Julia posted this next part while I was still writing this post, but the other definitions of tragedy—the prevention ability, the element of surprise, the eternal loss—all tie into things that can cause us to react unconsciously and uncontrollably with real emotion. The magnitude of each of these factors, and the effect it has on us, varies a bit through personal experience. But as a general rule, each factor alone could elevate bad to tragedy.

Overall, what’s the difference between “bad” and “tragedy?” Whether the emotional sorrow you feel is an unconscious choice or a conscious response (to some indicator or reason that you should feel sad). Many factors can influence this, but it will come down to your personal perspective. After all, if someone says something is tragic, how will you know if it’s because he thinks you should feel sad/he should feel sad, or because he actually feels sorrow?

Tragedy occurs when something is lost that can't be regained. When somebody ruins their new designer purse, it isn't a "tragedy" because they can just buy a new one. When somebody loses a limb or a friend we call it tragedy because we know they can't get it back. For example, a distant family friend was diagnosed with schizophrenia a few months ago and recently took his own life. This is a terrible tragedy because his condition and his actions can never be taken back; they will affect his family for the rest of their lives. Tragedies are permanent damage. It's like everybody starts at 100 points when they are conceived, and every tragedy is a subtraction from that 100 points until you end up at 0 when you die. I think tragedies are reality's way of saying, "your time here is going fast, and it's not going to last forever". Tragedies force us to consider what's important and usually push people to search for meaning in their lives. It's almost like we accept sad things as a part of daily life, but tragedies are small moments when death intersects with life, in ways that are both small and big.

I associate tragedy with many things that have already been touched upon in earlier posts—9/11 and Romeo and Juliet—but I’d like to dance with my classmates who find death to be the basis of tragedy. Certainly, death can play a part in tragedy, but it does not define it. It’s certainly difficult to deal with loss, but it isn’t a tragedy if a man or woman dies of old age after living a full life. It’s a tragedy if a child dies. Tragedy is attached to opportunity, and opportunities missed.



In the case of 9/11, tragedy came from the abrupt loss of lives and opportunities as well as the overall feeling that we—referring to the United States—could have prevented the situation. The same goes for the Colorado shooting. After the incident, James Holmes’ past of mental illness and suspicious purchases showed the public that the Colorado incident could have been prevented, adding to the tragedy of the deaths.



With Romeo and Juliet, the tragedy comes from the situation in which the young lovers find themselves. The opportunity for a stable relationship is missed before they even meet, and, at the very end, the opportunity for both to not commit suicide is missed as well.



Like Jenny said, tragedy is associated with the phrase “if only.”



“If only we had strengthened airport security sooner.”

“If only the psychiatrist had reported James Holmes’ behavior.”

“If only Juliet had woken before Romeo committed suicide.”



I realize that all of these examples deal with death. But tragedy is not contained in death itself, but the events leading up to death. As we see in Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, the tragedy in the author’s situation is that he hasn’t taken opportunities out of fear. If he proceeds to do so until death the tragedy will be heightened, but the truth of the tragedy is found in his missed opportunities—that he has not lived life to the fullest. The same applies for Our Town. Wilder’s play does not appear tragic until the protagonist realizes she hasn’t lived each moment of her life.



In a sense, each moment passing is a kind of death. It is a tragedy when these moments pass without attention—and when the realization that these moments have passed sets in.