Greek Tragedy

Greek tragedy is one of the three genres of plays that were performed in ancient Greek theater along with Comedy and Satire. Tragedy is associated with strong emotions such as pain and misery. This genre is also characterized by the rise and fall of a hero. Every tragedy ends with the demise of the protagonist that was caused by his own mistake and some sort of death that ends up greatly impacting him. Generally, the protagonist is some kind of human that is viewed greatly but is not an equal to the gods. They can be a great leader, an honorable king, but they are never viewed as a god.
According to the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle, all tragedies consisted of six parts: plot, characters, diction, thought, spectacle and song. Each tragedy also contains a plot arc made up of five parts: the exposition, the rising action of the tragic hero, the climax, the falling action of the tragic hero and the denouement. The plot arc is very important because the plot is said to be, as we learned in class, “the soul of tragedy” meaning that without it tragedy would be very different.


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“Pain and suffering are inevitable for persons of broad awareness and depth of heart. The truly great are... always bound to feel a great sense of sadness during their time upon Earth.”(317)

This is a quote from Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. This quote struck me when I first saw it and after learning more about Greek tragedy, I immediately thought about this quote because it reminded me of a typical tragic hero. Each protagonist is viewed as this gifted human being that is second only to the gods, however, every tragic plot arc ends with the hero experiencing a grave misfortune. This quote left me thinking that every single tragic hero’s mistake brings large consequences because of the high expectations that they are brought up with and accomplish until that point.