Tragedy

When one hears "tragedy," the first thing that comes to mind is death. A tragedy always ends in death, or agony from the death of a loved one for the protagonist. As opposed to a comedy, where things start fine, end fine, and go badly in the middle, a tragedy starts badly, goes well, and ends badly. And as I said, the bad ending is nearly always death. Since death is the most permanent state of being there is, a tragedy ends with the feeling that nothing can ever really fix it. I would classify a tragedy as a story in which the main character ends up worse than he was at the beginning, and with no real hope of things ever being able to change. Although a tragedy may contain a comedy element, it is the ending that really separates the two, and you may not be sure of which one it is until you get to the ending, and everyone dies or the situation improves.