Right that’s classic tragedies. Modern tragedies don’t bother with fatal flaws, they just kill the character, check out John Irving’s works he’s probably the master of the modern tragedy, his character pretty much die because it’s time to end the book. Where classic tragedies are about a life cycle and being consumed by your own flaws, modern tragedies tend to be primarily about death and the pointlessness it puts in life. In a modern tragedy all the struggles come to naught because the character dies anyway. This is, of course, why modern tragedies aren’t that popular, people don’t really want to read hundreds of pages of a book just to be told in the end that the entire exercise was pointless. And I think they’re popular with the literati crowd largely because they’re unpopular with the general populace, whatever the people are “too dumb to understand” will always find an audience with the literati.
I like the black screen of the Sopranos, I thought there was definite resolution, you just had to think about it. The resolution was the survive again, and in the end very little changes. The black screen to me was David Chase doing a Ferris Beuhler, telling us all to go home, the shows over.
Exactly why Harry couldn’t die. Rowling couldn’t have the message of her story be “none of that fighting matters, good can’t really win” could she?
Fairy tales need the hero to marry the princess at the end. That’s how they work.
- Most “drama”/ serious books that work really follow three forms: Classic Drama, Classic Hero’s Tale, and Existentialism... I think that modern audiences because tragedy as defined by the news media and pop culture define tragedy as meaningless death... i.e. a little child murdered by a sexual predator would be considered a tragedy by the media. I think that the general public (and some commentators) confuse existentialist writings with classic tragedy.
I do agree with you that Existentialist writings aren’t popular with non- Upper East Side crowd... (I still think the Existentialists are interesting though... I’m a big fan of Hemingway). However, I don’t believe that Harry’s death (if Rowlings had chosen the proper ending)would have been meaningless. Harry’s death was meaningful because it was necessary to destroy Voldemort. What a wonderful and brave thing to willingly sacrifice oneself for one’s friends as Harry did! As a Christian, I know that there’s life after death, so I don’t see how Harry’s death would have been sad. I think that it would have been triumphant. Everyone dies, but very few of us are able to choose our death and die for our friends as Harry did.