She uses an older and more academic definition of tragedy that really is not in use today outside of academic circles (and has never fit with my ideas anyway) and though it may be my "dominant religion" I can't see the bad guys winning as being the same as the good guys winning...if Sauron had won in middle earth things would have been much different and I would say tragic..
Well, no. But then, LotR and much other fantasy has Good vs. Evil, which just doesn't exist in the real world, nor in the Iliad. Certainly, in the real world you can have a war in which the leadership of one side is more benevolent than the other, or would treat the conquered better - but the individual people belonging to that side are not really different morally from those belonging to the other side, and their deaths are sad as well. In the real world you don't have enemies as convenient as orcs or Trollocs or whatnot, whose deaths are unambiguously good things (or nearly unambiguously, anyway; both Jordan and Tolkien do show a tiny amount of compassion for them at one point or other).
couldn't link directly to the entry but it is the 31st one on the bottom of the page currently.
I'll fix that for you.
blog by le Guin I disagree with but is interesting...
- 09/09/2011 05:10:55 AM
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And if the 'good guys' and 'bad guys' do exactly the same things?
- 09/09/2011 10:30:27 PM
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Edit your link URL to add #PapaH at the end and it'll go straight there.
- 10/09/2011 12:32:28 PM
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Yeah, I'm basically with Stephen and Camilla. The word "tragic" has been diluted by the media.
- 10/09/2011 01:31:05 PM
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Very nice post.
- 10/09/2011 02:18:06 PM
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