Talking Tragedy
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In the piece "Tragedy and the Common Man" by Arthur Miller, Miller discusses tragedy and how it affects people. He begins his paper by talking about how there are fewer tragedies being written today than in the past. He states that this is because common people today hold tragedy below them, or themselves above tragedy. Miller also tackles the belief that tragedy is for kings or powerful individuals, saying instead that to have a tragedy befall you one must simply be in the correct emotional state under the correct circumstances. Anyone can have an Oedipus or Orestes complex, not just royalty. He also talks about why tragedy happens and what it means. According to Miller, to be flawless one must be totally passive in their lives. This was rather shocking to me, but upon further thought it began to make a strange kind of sense. No one likes anyone more than an individual that does not complain. Miller also went on to say that in order for a tragic piece to be truly effective, it must contain the possibility of success or, in other words, there must be some possibility of something going right that the hero is looking forward to or desires. Without this element, there is no tragedy. Imagine applying for a college that you know will not accept you based on your grade point average. You have a zero percent chance to get in, but your parents want you to try anyways, so you do. You submit your application and, after a few weeks pass by, you get your predicted letter of decline. You're not heartbroken because you knew it was hopeless from the get-go. However, if that zero percent chance were replaced with a twenty percent chance, your mood may be different upon being declined. This is why the possibility of success is crucial to a tragic story. Honestly, I hadn't considered things from this specific perspective before. To me, all a narrative needed in order to be considered a tragedy was a sad plot or story. But, after reading up on Arthur Miller's point of view, I find myself agreeing with him. Everything that he has said makes sense when it is applied to the people of the modern world. For some reason I had never even considered that the possibility of success was something that had to be present in a tragic story, but it totally makes sense. Actually, there's a lot about tragedy that I have never considered before. I cannot imagine a story not including these elements having any tragic persuasiveness whatsoever. This has been a very interesting read for me, and I feel that I have indeed learned a lot about tragedies.
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