I found out that it is much easier to differentiate pathetic and tragedy from Shakespeare’s plays. For example, the famous tragedies Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet…etc they had “accurately balanced portrayal of the human being in the struggle for happiness”, they brought us knowledge and enlightenment. These are all the factors of tragedies, which pathos do not own. However, it is hard, and sometimes impossible to distinguish tragedy and pathetic from our modern literature. From the books I’ve read, I can hardly tell were they tragedy or just pathetic. I could not always learn things from these “modern tragedies”, they’ve only brought sadness, sympathy, and sometimes regret to me. What made the difference, and why we can hardly find good tragedies today? Somebody may think the ancient tragedies exaggerated too much, they were not portraying the real world but overstating things happened. For my opinion, our life is a play, there are tragedies and comedies within it, but when sad things come, why it is not as tragic as the play shows, and it sometimes been better describe as pathetic but not tragic? Who can tell the reason? I am confused, I agree with that tragedies do teach us valuable lessons, but they might not always portray our real life.
It is interesting that a lot of people do not really like tragedies because they bring them harsh feelings, but people usually remember tragedies better than comedies. I myself is one of them. I don’t like tragedies, or sometimes afraid of them. When reading tragedies, I might not cry but feeling bad, it is hard to describe the emotion, not just sadness but also something else. However when my friends ask me to tell stories, I always tell tragedies I read. Although I’ve read way more comedies than tragedies, but I like to tell tragedies, and I think tragedies will attract people more and people will always remember them. Why is it? For my opinion, I think it is a thing that called “incomplete beauty”. As one of the Chinese adage has stated, “people easily forget happy days, and hardly disregard sorrow and regret.” This is why tragedies always bring people deeply thinking, with more thinking, people will learn more and remember better.
