Perspective Of The Tragic Situation In 20th Century American Novels Tragedy

Tragic aesthetics is a sort of special aesthetics. And it regards hardships, misery and the painful emotion as its objects. At the same time it can give aesthetical judgment and comment on the tragic heroes'attitudes which they keep when they are faced disaster and misfortune. In other words, tragic aesthetics looks for the aesthetics from the misfortune, misery and distruction in life to judge and evaluate this kind of aesthetics. This paper breaks the traditional classification and creates a new way to classify the 20th century famous American tragic novels. There are four types of tragic situations in it: firstly, when the heroes of the novels get into a situation which gives them too much misery and pain but they try their best to fight against it and sometimes they are doomed to die, they have no fear or regret; secondly, when the results and heroes'motivations are completely opposite they can keep their original belief and strive for it all their life; thirdly, sometimes the heroes are lost in a dilemma but they never miss their life directions they make their decision following their heart and go on with it no matter the result is bad or good; fourthly, a kind of new development of American tragedy, Black Humor novels, the heroes are also in a depressed situation but they find another way to relax themselves, to tease and find a so-called happiness for themselves. Furtherly, This paper proves the situation of being in a dilemma is the main type of all the four tragic situation under the background of 20th century American history and politics.