Tragedy is one of those overused words that constantly appear in print and on the Internet to describe everything from the death of a beached whale to the death through drug overdose of a C-list comedian or actress. For the record, the untimely death of Anna Nicole Smith and the fall from grace of Britney Spears are not tragedies in the sense I chose to use the word. I do not wish to lessen the personal sense of loss that people feel after the death of anyone. But, in the classical sense, tragedy is much more than death. Surely, if one holds to a religious belief - whether it is Christian, Judaism, Islam, or whatever - death truly holds no sting. For if one believes that there is life everlasting, death brings sadness to the living - not the dead - through our sense of personal loss.

When one focuses on tragedy in its classical sense, the word takes on an entirely different significance Tragedy resides not in untimely death but in the "hamartia" - "tragic flaw" - that is shared by us all. Hamartia was described (not first but, certainly, most famously) by Aristotle in his Poetics. A prime example of Greek tragedy is the story of "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles. The story, itself, is exemplary of the greatest of a man felled by a tragic flaw. To quickly summarize the tale: Oedipus is the son of the King (Laius) and Queen (Jocasta) of Thebes, an early Grecian city-state. An oracle warms King Laius that his son will grow up and kill him someday and take his throne. He decides to rid himself and his kingdom of the future patricide/regicide and orders his young son killed. However, the son is rescued by a shepard who then presents Oedipus to the childless King and Queen of neighboring Corinth. Oedipus, then, is a heir to the throne of Corinth. At the seminal moment of classical tragedy, Oedipus does indeed kill his father, the king of Thebes, over a quarrel at a bridge. Through his bravery and intelligence, Oedipus subsequently saves Thebes and is named its king and, as such, marries his mother, Jocasta. When the tangled web is revealed to the son-mother couple - i.e. that Oedipus has fulfilled the oracle’s prophecy of killing his father and marrying his mother - Jocasta commits suicide and Oedipus blinds himself to live, forever, as a beggar.

Oedipus’ "hamartia" - his tragic flaw - was pride and insufficient knowledge (his true parentage) and it led inexorably (and for the audience to behold) to his downfall. The Greek tragedy was designed to elicit two emotions from the audience - pity and fear. Both served societal and cultural purposes: Pity for the main character’s star-crossed, inescapable fall enabled the audience to undergo a catharsis - an emotional "cleansing" - that gave them heart and soul and a healing for their own pain. Fear was conveyed, conversely, to warn the viewer that, should they manifest the same flaw in their own lives, something equally tragic might happen to them. As stated by Aristotle:

"Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete (composed of an introduction, a middle part and an ending), and possesses magnitude; in language made pleasurable, each of its species separated in different parts; performed by actors, not through narration; effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotions."

After the Greeks, the first significant rebirth of the tragic drama came from the pen of Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Romeo and Juliet remain the most popular and familiar examples of classical tragedy. No one since has fully mastered the dramatic genre of tragedy and its representation on the stage and screen has been notably and distinctly empty. If you dispute this, you only need to realize that Romeo and Juliet, alone, has been done in nearly a dozen versions in the United States alone, the last (a "modernized" setting and characterization) debuted in 1996. In fact, the subject of the earliest "projected synchronized motion pictures" was a French version of Romeo and Juliet produced by Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre in 1900.

Another point of some note when one studies the limited production of quality tragedy of the Greek school is the virtual absence of such works from American playwrights. One may consider Eugene O’Neal’s "The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day’s Journey Into Night" and Tennessee Williams’ "Streetcar Named Desire" as "contemporary tragedies." And they are tragedies in the sense that one feels at least the catharsis of pity for the sadness and helplessness that these plays depict. But I am quite sure that Aristotle would not agree that these works evoke the same sense of fear that Hellenic - or even Shakespearean - drama instilled in those ancient audiences. There has been little to replace true tragic drama in 500 years.

It has been suggested that Americans cannot truly appreciate tragedy because we are instilled with the delusion that each man and woman is the captain of their own ship and their own lives. American idealism - "You can be anything you want in American" - has deceived and numbed us to the fact that we have had our fair share of tragic figures in our brief history. Men who, though achieving greatness, fell from grace - no less than Oedipus or Othello - due to their own, very human character flaws. Perhaps, it is the deep belief - to the marrow of our bones and essence of our being - that we have complete control of destiny that is our fatal flaw - our characteristically American "hamartia." We all naively hold tightly to the words of William Ernest Henley:

Would that it were true for all. Despite our technology, our wits and our determination sometimes (more often that we care to acknowledge) our vanity and the other imperfections of our character can still bring us to our knees. This is part of the humanity that we all share and none are immune.

In the next 3 essays, I will examine a trio of uniquely American tragedies. They are all known to you, to one degree or the other. They all share the classical Hellenic theme of greatness achieved and, then, lost - often suddenly - due to human imperfection. These are not "they died too young" melodrama or tales of John Kennedy-esque sorrow caused by the intrusion and madness of others. These are men who overcame every obstacles, reached the pinnacle of success and lost it all with no one to blame but their own foibles. That is the essence of authentic tragedy: when one can look in the mirror and point no finger of blame to anyone other than the image reflected back. Tragedy for which there is no one to share the burden is the heaviest of all. And these are the stories that will follow - one from each of the last 3 centuries. The lessons to be learned are universal, timeless and, perhaps, instructive.