Literature: Drama and Tragedy
Aspects of Tragedy is the A Level English Literature topic in which you study a play, often alongside a linked prose or poetry text, as a tragedy, examining how a protagonist's pride, ambition or fatal flaw combines with circumstance to cause their downfall. AQA's Aspects of Tragedy paper asks you to analyse an unseen extract closely, then write an essay connecting it to at least one other tragedy you have studied.
Before you start
Make sure you're comfortable with these topics first:
Method
- Read the extract twice: once for what happens, once tracking how the tragic hero's flaw is shown through dialogue and stage directions.
- Track register: note where a character's speech turns heightened, rhetorical or image-laden, and where it stays plain and practical, since playwrights use this contrast to mark status and foreshadow conflict.
- Look at structure: identify where dramatic irony lets the audience see danger before the protagonist does, and how opening or closing stage directions frame the extract.
- Link the extract to the whole play: find at least two further moments, one earlier and one later, that develop the same tragic pattern.
- In the essay, weigh critical viewpoints, for example whether tragedy is caused more by fate or by free will, rather than only narrating the plot.
- Plan a clear line of argument before writing, and use precise subject terminology such as hamartia, hubris, catharsis and peripeteia throughout.
Worked example
In an extract from a modern tragedy, a proud lighthouse keeper, Meredith, dismisses his assistant's warning about a coming storm: 'I have kept this light for twenty-six years, and the sea has never once told me my business.' Moments later, alone, he refuses to check the failing generator. Explain how this speech and the surrounding action present Meredith as a tragic protagonist.
- Identify the technique: Meredith's absolute claim ('never once') is hyperbolic and rhetorical, a heightened register typical of a tragic protagonist asserting mastery.
- Link to hamartia: the boast reveals pride, and his refusal to check the generator immediately afterwards shows this pride translating into a fatal, avoidable decision.
- Note the dramatic irony: because the audience already knows the storm is coming, Meredith's confidence reads as dangerously misplaced, building tension.
- Consider structure: placing the refusal to act straight after the boast lets the audience watch the flaw cause the next plot event, rather than just describe it.
- Final answer: Meredith's rhetorical, absolute claim and his immediate refusal to act present him as a tragic protagonist whose hubris, not simply bad luck, drives the coming disaster.
Practice questions
Try each question, then tap to reveal the answer.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a English exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Identify four words or phrases from the following stage direction that create a sense of foreboding: 'The harbour lights gutter one by one. A gull cries once, high over the jetty, and is not heard again. Meredith stands with his back to the door, the barometer unread on the wall behind him.'
Explain how the worked example extract above presents Meredith's pride as the cause of the danger he now faces. Refer to language and structure in your answer.
Compare how pride is presented in the worked example extract above with how pride or ambition is presented in one other tragedy you have studied. Focus on ONE moment from each text.
Free printable worksheet
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