Ink

Weep or Laugh?

We are mistaken if we suppose that comedy and tragedy are different in any fundamental way. They are different ways of treating a story, and sometimes the same story. The characters in a comedy may suffer the same personal catastrophes as the characters in a tragedy; but we have decided that laughter is the proper response, so we laugh. We may end the story at a different place, but then again we may not. In human life, every story ends in death—but does that make all human life a tragedy? The story of Don Quixote ends with the death of its hero; but if Don Quixote is not comedy, then there is no such thing as comedy. Certainly its hero suffers enough misfortunes for any tragedy: beatings, madness, death. But we laugh, and we laugh even though we have come to love him. It is not cruel laughter; it is comedy. Cervantes chose to tell his story that way.

In our own lives the same is true. When we see that the same misfortunes may befall the characters in one novel by Dostoyevsky and in another by Wodehouse, then we begin to understand that our own lives are presenting us with a choice. We can be living in a Dostoyevsky novel, or we can be living in a Wodehouse novel. In either case the incidents are the same. But shall we weep, or shall we laugh? That is our choice.