Tragic Comedy Characters

Paper Summary:

The paper reviews the two plays "The Cherry Orchard" by Bernard Shaw and "Heartbreak House" by Anton Chekhov and examines how the two works are intertwined with each other in theme and structure, the latter inspired by the former. It discusses how both plays are tragi-comedies and how both seem to portray what is right and wrong even though there are no real villains or heroes and how both are seemingly plotless, yet intricately designed to be full of plot detail. It also shows how the similarity between these two plays lies in the techniques employed by the playwrights to achieve this by inserting the tragedy of the everyday into comedy.

From the Paper:

"The dramatic techniques apparent in the two plays being discussed branch out from the root definition of the plays as comedies, or perhaps more specifically as tragicomedies. Tragicomedy is essentially comedy that revolves around tragedy, with a key factor being that the action is revolving around real people. Only real people, in the sense of a naturalistic portrayal of people in real life, are capable of moving from one concept to the other in the space of a breath. The archetypal hero disobeys the archetype if he or she moves from sadness to happiness in an irregular, unforeseeable pattern, a feat required in tragicomedy."

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