Tragic words?

My English A-level teacher was adamant that there was no such thing as a tragedy. Rather, she made a very good point about tabloid overuse of the term. I sometimes wonder whether I get my pedantry from Mrs Ellis, but when it comes to the term tragedy and the media’s fondness for it, she couldn’t be more right.

A tragedy is, properly, a term with its origins in Greek mythology. A tragedy in the classical sense must be played out over the course of no more than a day and a night and, if we’re being proper about it, relates to the death of a king or other politically or regally important figure.

On this basis, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, might be termed a tragedy. Many people would concur. But the original meaning of the term ‘tragic’ would not have extended to “tragic Cheryl Cole” being unwell and unhappy due to the break-up of her marriage.

Shakespeare was on the money with Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, in other words; Marley And Me, on the other hand, doesn't count.

The headline announcing the death of a close schoolfriend of mine should not have been ‘Tragedy of death fall student’. Rightfully, it should have referred to the ‘sad loss’, ‘awful accident’ or ‘fatal slip’. Calling it a tragedy does not make it any more serious or give it more gravitas. In fact, it implies a death foretold or premeditated and since we don’t have an author’s insight into what Simon’s state of mind was immediately prior to falling out of the window, we can’t conclude anything of the sort.

Suicides might be classed as tragedies since premeditation is often part of the act, but whether the person intended to go through with the act of finality is also open to conjecture. We have every reason to believe another schoolfriend accidentally hanged himself while showing off in front of his brother, but we can’t and don’t know. We only know that he was among the outwardly happiest and most contented of our clan.

Tragedy can also be collective. Hillsborough, the Haiti earthquake and the Boxing Day tsunami are probably rightly tagged with the term. The latter two were natural disasters, but their effects were magnified to become a tragedy due to the poverty of their geographical location. The tragic aspect is that they were accidents waiting to happen and avoidable deaths due to poor infrastructure and lack of effective warning systems.

On this basis, books such as Frank McCourt’s Angela's Ashes come under the heading 'tragedy', since the poverty of Irish families starving and near-starving was both predictable and avoidable. In fact, while Angela's Ashes has undergone a critical reassessment or two since its original publication in the early 1990s, the heart-rending tale isn’t that far removed from the tales of grinding poverty of some of the best-loved classics. Dickens, Zola, Steinbeck and Hardy all wrote fictional narratives that highlighted the everyday struggle to survive of everyday people.

But how are we to judge other fiction that depicts human suffering but without the apparent aim of bringing to light. Should Marley and Me and About A Boy be measured against Tess Of The D'Urbevilles or Germinal? Granted, the two are divided by the non-true life and fictional distinction. Even so, the term tragedy is bandied about in relation to both.

The snob in me came out when I discovered an entire rack of books in my local WHSmith devoted to tales of misery and despair. Worse, it was the largest non-fiction section in the whole shop. It was closely followed in population by the racks devoted to celebrity biographies. Even serious politicians have fallen foul of the need to expose their serious shortcomings and life-threatening (or career-jeopardising) experiences. Edwina Currie and John Prescott are only the latest examples. But if the only profitable, bankable books for publishers are ones written by or about the ‘tragic’ celebrities that disgrace our daily chip paper, it's little wonder that’s what we're offered.

Such tales may keep you awake at night, but for their lurid content rather than crafted prose.