What exactly is a tragedy?

I think a decent amount of time has passed since I've made a horribly insensitive comment, so I feel like I may need to break this streak.

I was reading one of my usual baseball venues (Rob Neyer's blog), and he was using Heath Ledger's untimely death (which I hadn't known about until I saw this article) to illustrate his point that the five-year waiting period normally present for a player to be elected to the Hall of Fame is a bad idea. (The comparison was to Ledger having lost out to Hoffman for a "Best Actor" Oscar victory with a speculation that perhaps the voters assumed Ledger would have many more chances given that his career was in its infancy.) Here is what Neyer writes about tragedies in this context:

Reading the message boards, one sees Heath Ledger's death described as a "tragedy."

No doubt. But for whom, exactly? He was someone's son, and the father of a two-year-old daughter. It's tragic for his parents, and for his daughter. In the grand scheme of things, though? Every day there are tragedies that would, if you could figure all the equations, rate larger than this one.

If you think Ledger's death is a tragedy, it's because of how it affects you, not his parents or his daughter. It's because he meant something to you. It's because you found his performance as Ennis Del Mar incredibly affecting and you wanted to see if he'd ever get another role as good. It's because you've been jazzed about seeing his take on The Joker since you first heard about that (presumably) brilliant bit of casting.

Or maybe that's just me. I just know I felt the same yesterday as I do when some long-ago major leaguer has died. It's my tragedy. I don't feel sorry for his wife or his children, or his grandchildren. They're mostly just abstractions in my mind. I feel sorry for me, because Johnny Podres and Tommy Byrne and Gerry Staley were all small-but-important pieces of my life.


I agree with the above sentiments. I have felt something when particular people (actors, baseball players, and so on) I've never met have died, and it essentially has to do with whatever pleasure they have brought to my life (and will no longer bring) because otherwise it's (all else being equal) the same as if it had happened to a random person. Obviously, things are much poignant if it's somebody I know personally (and am presumably fond of). Maybe my ability to empathize with other people is just woefully inadequate (I'm not sure, to be honest), but I think it is possible to simultaneously empathize with the family of somebody who has died way too early and keep the big picture in mind as well. Frankly, I think that most people are way to quick to apply the label of "tragedy" to things that are unfortunate, sad, and so on, but that aren't true tragedies. What that accomplishes is to trivialize real tragedies (of which there are than enough) by elevating things that are perhaps extremely poignant but not at the level of what an actual tragedy is.

While starting this blog entry, the background song "Sound of Silence", which seemed quite appropriate. (After that was "Goodbye-Goodbye", which is a bit livelier and perhaps less appropriate for this entry.) I'll miss Heath Ledger's acting and I do feel some sense of loss after reading this news, but please let's keep a bigger picture in mind.

Anyway, I don't think I've pissed off too many people lately, and I wanted to fill the sudden gap in my life.