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Paige Popescu

S. McGriff

Composition 1

October 4, 2018

Compare and Contrast: Comedy Vs. Tragedy

Who doesn’t like a good comedy? For most it brings up their energy and uplifts their

spirit, filling them with laughter and happiness. Whereas tragedies, in most cases, teach some

important lessons of life, by arousing a sense of pity and terror. These two depictions of art sculpt

one's thoughts and feelings, leaving a mental and emotional impression on their audience.

Although these two genres are perceived as being complete opposites of each other, certain

similarities can also be seen. The ways that comedy and tragedy correlate and differentiate with

each other are, both comedy and tragedy have protagonist, heroes, a purpose, conflict, view, and

an ending; those are all the similarities they share, but those same similar concepts differ from

each other by having divergent interpretations.

First, let me start off with the protagonist and how in comedy and tragedy they contrast

with each other, since we already know how they compare. In comedy the protagonist, in other

words, the lead character is usually an ordinary person that shows a desire to learn and change.

In turn, tragedy consists of a protagonist that is typically a member of royalty, an aristocrat or a

godly being that shows reluctance to change, which leads to annihilation through his own

weakness. On this view, tragedy confronts us with profound truths about morality and the human

world, comedy provides an enjoyable flight from it. The comical figure does not have to go

through a moral lesson, whereas in tragedy the protagonist does.

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Moreover, both genres similarly have heroines in their storyline and both must display at

least the minimal level of personal charm or worth of character it takes to win the audience's

approval and support. On the contrary, they are unalike by the varying endings, the comedy ends

happily, and the hero achieves his goal at the end. Comic heroes tend to be more flexible. Life

tends to be messier, full of diversity and unexpected twists and turns. It is more difficult to

classify experience. Tragic heroes tend to approach problems and situation in a straight-forward

manner. Life can be understood in simple binaries, the good the bad, just/ unjust, beautiful and

ugly. Comic heroes and plots tend to see the unexpected and surprising as an opportunity rather

than a norm-violation. Tragic heroes and plots have a low tolerance for cognitive dissonance.

The violation of the norm is what brings about a tragic fall.

Next, we’re going to get into the purpose of comedy and tragedy and see exactly how

they weigh against one another. The main difference between comedy and tragedy is that

comedy is a humorous story with a happy ending while a tragedy is a serious story with a sad

ending. The purpose of tragedy is to evoke a wonder born of pity and fear, the result of which is

cathartic. Because tragedy is built around an internal conflict of character, identification with

the protagonist is crucial to success. The purpose of this dramatic work is triumph over

unpleasant circumstance by creating comic effects, resulting in a happy or successful

conclusion. Thus, the purpose of comedy is to amuse the audience. Comedy has multiple sub-

genres depending upon the source of the humor, context in which an author delivers dialogues,

and delivery methods, which include farce, satire, and burlesque. Tragedy is opposite to

comedy, as tragedy deals with sorrowful and tragic events in a story.

In addition, the conflicts that arise between comedy and tragedy are distinctively

different. Of the two, the comic vision is easier to explain, since, as we shall see, it corresponds
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to the way most of us think (or like to think) about life. Stated most simply, the comic vision

celebrates the individual's participation in a community as the most important part of life. When

the normal community is upset, the main characters in a comedy will normally have the initial

urge to seek to restore that normality, to get back what they have lost. But one way and another,

they persevere, and the conflict is resolved happily with the reintegration of the characters into a

shared community. Often an important point in the comedy is the way in which the main

characters have to learn some important things about life (especially about themselves) before

being able to resolve the conflict. Tragedy, by contrast, explores something much more complex:

the individual's sense of his own desire to confront the world on his own terms, to get the world

to answer to his conceptions of himself, if necessary at the expense of customary social bonds

and even of his own life.

Furthermore, the two have a few similar views that correspond but they consist mostly

of diverse viewpoints. The comic artist’s purpose is to hold a mirror up to society to

reflect its follies and vices, in the hope that they will, as a result, be mended. This

view of the corrective purpose of laughter; specifically, he felt, laughter is intended to

bring the comic character back into the conformity with his society, whose logic and

conventions he abandons when he slackens in the attentions that is due to life. Much

of American pop culture tends to embrace the comic vision of art, finding tragedy

depressing or disturbing. However, most people thought that facing tragedy was a

healthy and necessary antidote to human foolishness. It taught humans to know

themselves in a way comedy could not.

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Lastly, the ending of both comedy and tragedy mix by their different representations of

how they transpire and the morality of it all. Although their final acts couldn't be any more

dissimilar, classic tragedies and comedies share a wide range of similarities. In fact, other than

the difference in the hero's fate at the end, well-structured comedies and tragedies are built

around the same basic principles, as both use intimate looks at characters to extrapolate

themes about the world in which they are set. It is Usually a happy ending, unlike a tragedy play

which normally resolves in the main character dying. the main difference between A comedy is one that

has a happy ending, usually involving marriages between the unmarried characters, and a tone

and style that is more light-hearted than other plays. The thought that tragic drama gives moral

insight or teaches a moral lesson, in contrast comedy there is not a moral reasoning for

anything.

In conclusion, as you can see these are the profound ways that comedy and tragedy correlate

and differentiate with one another. We now know that the purpose of Tragedy is to evoke a wonder

born of pity and fear, the result of which is cathartic. As audience members we should

sympathize with the protagonist, possibly recognizing in him/her our own human weaknesses.

We also have summed up that comedy is generally intended to be humorous or amusing by

inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, stand-up comedy, or any other medium

of entertainment. After constructing our thoughts on comedy vs. tragedy, it is shown how they

are alike in many ways, but they also are distinctively different which can help us better paint a

picture of the soul purpose of both genres.

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