“Life’s Tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.” (Benjamin Franklin)
Tragedy is an essential part of our life as without facing tragedy we cannot be familiar with the hurdles of life. This quotation paves the ways of thinking over the tragedies around us. There are various definitions of tragedy that the people have defined according to their own views and categorized this term into diverse sections. According to critics, tragedy is a literary term that refers to the genre of drama and illustrates those human beings who have suffered from the pains and anxieties. Tragedy portrays the tragic events in a terrible but dignified ways.
The Greek tragedy is not separate from the tragedy of literature. Greek tragedy is termed and originated back to the 5th century BC. It has also the same features of the tragedy that typically depicts about the tragic or an awful doom of the protagonists in the dramas or the other fictional genres. A hero in a Greek tragedy meets with his doom by facing a lot of troubles and making such judgments that leads him towards his panic kismet.
Aristotle as a philosopher has defined Greek tragedy in his own work, ‘The Poetics’. He has defined tragedy as,
“Tragedy is an imitation of action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation (catharsis) of these emotions.”
Shakespeare is another famous name considering with the literature. He produced various dramas and plays in which the heroes met with their tragic dooms. According to him, Unity, Time and Place are the major elements to illustrate a tragedy while Aristotle proposed three unities such as Place, Time and Action. Shakespeare has extracted the idea of classical tragedy and portrayed that idea in his tragic plays but in a dramatic form. The heroes of his plays deal and struggle hard to besiege their fate and win the debates morally.
Martin Luther King has defined tragedy in his own words as, “The ultimate tragedy is not the brutality of the bad people but the silence of the good people.” (Martin Luther King)
Besides all these definitions and categories of tragedy, there are various movies as well as video songs of Bollywood industry that show diverse forms of tragedy. The protagonists of the movies do not always meet with such tragedies that are being mentioned above by different philosophers as well as dramatists. The Indian movies like Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela, Fanaa, Tere Naam, Kal Ho Na Ho, and Devdas movies have simple tragedies close to reality and Haider, Omkara and Maqbool movies are based on the stories of Shakespearean tragedies. Through such stories, we learn the lessons that tended to be portrayed more sturdy through such tragedies and we find ourselves in a situation that can open up the ways to put our hypothetical arguments into practical life.
The elements of comedy in the movies are also considered as the backbone of the development of the plot. The Bollywood movies comprise the ridiculous actions in order to relax the minds of the audience. As we all know that humor is one of the major reasons that can heal the mental anxieties and distress of the audience.
To conclude the above discussion into a nutshell, we can say that there are various definitions of tragedy that are being shown in Indian movies and songs but the only idea of the tragedy that has overcome to our minds is,
“The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.” (Norman Cousins)
Tragedy is an essential part of our life as without facing tragedy we cannot be familiar with the hurdles of life. This quotation paves the ways of thinking over the tragedies around us. There are various definitions of tragedy that the people have defined according to their own views and categorized this term into diverse sections. According to critics, tragedy is a literary term that refers to the genre of drama and illustrates those human beings who have suffered from the pains and anxieties. Tragedy portrays the tragic events in a terrible but dignified ways.
The Greek tragedy is not separate from the tragedy of literature. Greek tragedy is termed and originated back to the 5th century BC. It has also the same features of the tragedy that typically depicts about the tragic or an awful doom of the protagonists in the dramas or the other fictional genres. A hero in a Greek tragedy meets with his doom by facing a lot of troubles and making such judgments that leads him towards his panic kismet.
Aristotle as a philosopher has defined Greek tragedy in his own work, ‘The Poetics’. He has defined tragedy as,
“Tragedy is an imitation of action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation (catharsis) of these emotions.”
Shakespeare is another famous name considering with the literature. He produced various dramas and plays in which the heroes met with their tragic dooms. According to him, Unity, Time and Place are the major elements to illustrate a tragedy while Aristotle proposed three unities such as Place, Time and Action. Shakespeare has extracted the idea of classical tragedy and portrayed that idea in his tragic plays but in a dramatic form. The heroes of his plays deal and struggle hard to besiege their fate and win the debates morally.
Martin Luther King has defined tragedy in his own words as, “The ultimate tragedy is not the brutality of the bad people but the silence of the good people.” (Martin Luther King)
Besides all these definitions and categories of tragedy, there are various movies as well as video songs of Bollywood industry that show diverse forms of tragedy. The protagonists of the movies do not always meet with such tragedies that are being mentioned above by different philosophers as well as dramatists. The Indian movies like Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela, Fanaa, Tere Naam, Kal Ho Na Ho, and Devdas movies have simple tragedies close to reality and Haider, Omkara and Maqbool movies are based on the stories of Shakespearean tragedies. Through such stories, we learn the lessons that tended to be portrayed more sturdy through such tragedies and we find ourselves in a situation that can open up the ways to put our hypothetical arguments into practical life.
The elements of comedy in the movies are also considered as the backbone of the development of the plot. The Bollywood movies comprise the ridiculous actions in order to relax the minds of the audience. As we all know that humor is one of the major reasons that can heal the mental anxieties and distress of the audience.
To conclude the above discussion into a nutshell, we can say that there are various definitions of tragedy that are being shown in Indian movies and songs but the only idea of the tragedy that has overcome to our minds is,
“The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.” (Norman Cousins)