Tragedy...What is It?

Aristotle, what a guy.

Tragedy. We've all seen it (or read it). It comes in so many forms. There's the classic Shakespearean play, Romeo and Juliet. The opera, Phantom of the Opera. We recognize it when we see it, but what really defines something as a tragedy? If we ask Wikipedia (always right), its a form of art based on human suffering that offers pleasure to its audience. Pleasure...from suffering.

Here's our favorite Greek philosopher's opinion on tragedies, straight from the tragedy page on Wikipedia:

According to Aristotle, "the structure of the best tragedy should be not simple but complex and one that represents incidents arousing fear and pity--for that is peculiar to this form of art." To be a tragedy, this must be caused by the tragic hero's hamartia, which is often mistranslated as a character flaw, but is more correctly translated as a mistake. "The change to bad fortune which he undergoes is not due to any moral defect or flaw, but a mistake of some kind." This bad fortune is the result of an inevitable but unforeseen result of some action taken by the hero. If a character’s downfall is brought about by an external cause, Aristotle describes this as a misadventure and not a tragedy.

Putting it simply, all tragedies have a few common components. To be classified as a tragedy, the main character must make a mistake. Due to this mistake, he/she will experience some form of bad fortune. In many tragedies, it is death, but this is not always the case. The mistake that the main character makes also cannot be due to any personal moral flaw or be caused by an external cause, otherwise it becomes a misadventure.