Happily Ever After ?

This reading provides a rather opposing look at tragedies in most sources we have looked at they focus on the suffering and misfortunes that are in tragedies. What kinds of misfortunes are there , who causes them, etc However in Joseph Krutch’s Reading Tree from “ The Tragic Fallacy” we are presented with a more positive look at tragedies. The beginning of the piece he refers to Aristodels idea or tragedy wich is the “imitation of noble actions” saying that a tragedy is neither an imitation nor always noble. 
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He goes on to try and express how tragedies are not all the same and do not necessarily follow the same rubric or pattern.  He also dispels the idea that a tragedy is a made up of noble actions “Tragedy is not, then as Aristotle said , the imitation of noble actions, for, indeed, no one knows what a noble action is or whether or not such a thing as nobility exists in nature apart from the mind of man.” ( Joseph Krutch, Reading Three) How can a tragedy be made of noble actions when within a tragedy there are heroes like Achilles who drags Hector around the city walls of Troy on the back of a chariot in front of all of Hector’s family and subjects bringing Andromache to his knees begging to have his son's body back for a proper burial. That is not a noble action and yet the work is still considered a tragedy. 


People know the world is at best imperfect. We are aware of the loss and suffering that are a part of this world . The point of a tragedy is to show are accepted of this fact but also to show our faith in mankind and our ability to struggle and strive for better. “ ...people fully aware of the calamities of life is nevertheless serenely confident of the greatness of man “ ( Joseph Krutch, Reading Three) .  A man shows his greatest features when put in the worst circumstances .  To fight for something more something better,to struggle and fall and still have the desire to raise back up. It's not meant to focus on the turmoil and suffering but instead on the “triumph over despair and of confidence in the value of human life” 


Krutch also has the idea that all stories “worth their weight have happy endings” I do not think he means the Disney fairytale happy ending buy instead that the works end in they way the audiences wants them to. The audience is satisfied with the ending. If Shakespeare had ended Romeo and Juliet with an ‘ and they live happily ever after’ or even just with Romeo living in exile and Juliet despising him for killing her cousin,  marrying Paris ;we would not be nearly as attached to the story. The ending that Shakespeare gives us with the death of the two young lovers shows  a passionate capacity for love no matter what the causes, it also causes the two families to finally set aside their rivalry and see that there hate gave them only grief. “ we accept gladly the outward defeats which it describes for the sake of the inward victories which it revealed. Juliet died, but not before she had shown how great and resplendent a thing love could be” ( Joseph Krutch, Reading Three).   Without the loss of the “ star-crossed lovers,” we wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing this play out it would feel unfinished and unsatisfying.