Containing a Portion of Introductory Writing
- The end of a comedy comes when the author has made his characters as happy as possible.
- The end of a tragedy means that the author has made his characters as miserable as possible.
- If this were a tragedy, we would be really close to the end.
- How much unhappier can Tom and Sophia get?
- To make them happy seems much harder to do, at this point.
- Instead of finding joy, it seems likelier that Sophia will either marry Mr. Blifil or Lord Fellamar, and that Tom will get hanged.
- The narrator promises he won't use any supernatural forces to make Tom happy. (No wish-granting genies!)
- Classical writers were lucky.
- They could just pull in their gods to take care of business when they needed to change a plot around.
- But the narrator has to stick to realistic, natural ways of getting Tom out of jail.
- And Tom may not even know the worst part of his bad luck yet.