Trayvon Williams tragedy(not)

[Jude Bloom]

Not to argue with an egg, but I thought the defining part of tragedy was not simple suffering but instead entailed the victim in some way having a hand in their own downfall. Hard to argue a bag of Skittles as some kind of hubris.


On Mar 22, 2012, at 4:47 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

>> I have come to see that the word 'tragedy' has come to mean, basically, 'an
>> early death' due to some kind of
>> disaster.....earthquake, sunami, murder, etc......
> 
> Not when I use the word "tragedy", for when I use a word, as Humpty
> taught me, it means exactly what it has always meant. In this case,
> the word has not come to mean anything it didn't mean before. It has
> always meant the pleasure people take in viewing the sufferings of
> others who are on stage.  We may trace the etymology and this will
> confirm our meaning, for yahoos who follow the news are goats singing
> for the grapes. It is not uncommon to hear them in gin mills still.
> Buy me a round adn I'll tell ye more of it. A young man is dead; he is
> nothing to me, but I make merry at the pleasure of seeing his seath as
> tragedy.