When chatting with a brilliant new friend yesterday, I felt this sudden urge to dig back into my old theatre text books.
This passage below, was what I was looking for:
[TRAGEDY is a matter of life and death: "Life and death upon one tether, And running beautifully together." It is life lived in the shadow of death, death experienced in a triumph of life. It is the tension and the paradox from which arises beauty and exaltation. It is the triumph of the human spirit which fights against all odds for an idea in which it believes, and sinks to glorious defeat with head still high and fist raised against the lowering heavens. It is concerned with no small or mean ambition but with truth itself, whatever that may be--the truth that makes one free, so that death becomes a fulfillment, a magnificent final chord.]
Yes, theatrical tragedy is magnificent. (Call me an tragedy addict, I don't care.)
Also, the essence of tragedy rings true in real life more than often enough.
It is our personalities that drives our personal tragedies.
If not for these unbending personal traits, we would not forge our surroundings as we do, thus resulting in the traps that would ensnare us.
Oedipus ran toward the fate of killing his biological father, just because he was bent on leaving his "home" to avoid killing his father. It is because of his love and care for others, that ultimately causes him to commit the horrible acts that will finally condemn him.
(Freud definitely has Oedipus all wrong, the original theme has nothing to do with sex, period.)
But the tragedy itself, is not the ultimate goal of tragedy.
It is through the confrontation of loss, that we truly define who we are.
Oedipus is a (tragic) hero, because of how harsh he is on himself when the truth is finally known by all.
He does not give himself the easy way out, unlike what many people do, giving themselves the mental way out when they are forced to confront their own horrible deeds. (Nor does he kill himself, the ultimate get away from shame and all other awful aspects.)
He blinds himself, confining himself into a sightless solitude of darkness, forced to face what he has done by himself until the end of his days.
This is courage, the stuff that heroes are made up of.
And all this, is from a single passage, in an old old old text book.
Who says text books are stuffy and useless.