"A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him"
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Orwell defines tragedy as the recognition that virtue may be crushed and yet remain morally superior to the forces that crush it. The triumph on offer is not a happy ending but a judgment of value: a felt conviction that human courage, pity, and honesty are higher than brute necessity, accident, or power. That stance distinguishes tragedy from melodrama, which rewards goodness, and from nihilism, which denies meaning. In tragedy, the scales of events tilt against the protagonist, but the scales of significance tip toward human dignity. The defeat is real, yet it does not degrade the defeated; rather, the very manner of facing defeat becomes the measure of nobility.
The line comes from Orwell’s essay Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool, written after total war and amid his lifelong struggle against totalitarianism. He was answering Tolstoy’s attack on Shakespeare, arguing that King Lear is great precisely because it refuses to tidy the world to fit a moral ledger. Lear dies, Cordelia dies, justice does not prevail, and still the play leaves a sharpened sense of what decency, love, and truth are worth. Orwell’s politics and art rest on the same foundation. Having seen revolution corrupted in Spain and the machinery of propaganda flatten experience, he distrusted narratives that promise automatic victory for the virtuous. Yet he would not surrender to cynicism. The nobility he points to is not triumphalist; it is the stubborn human refusal to lie, the impulse toward solidarity, the capacity to suffer without becoming cruel. Even when institutions, markets, or regimes prevail in fact, they do not finally define value. That conviction animates his novels, from the bleak end of Nineteen Eighty-Four to the bitter clarity of Animal Farm. Tragedy, for Orwell, becomes a moral instrument: a way of preserving faith in human worth when events give every reason to despair.
The line comes from Orwell’s essay Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool, written after total war and amid his lifelong struggle against totalitarianism. He was answering Tolstoy’s attack on Shakespeare, arguing that King Lear is great precisely because it refuses to tidy the world to fit a moral ledger. Lear dies, Cordelia dies, justice does not prevail, and still the play leaves a sharpened sense of what decency, love, and truth are worth. Orwell’s politics and art rest on the same foundation. Having seen revolution corrupted in Spain and the machinery of propaganda flatten experience, he distrusted narratives that promise automatic victory for the virtuous. Yet he would not surrender to cynicism. The nobility he points to is not triumphalist; it is the stubborn human refusal to lie, the impulse toward solidarity, the capacity to suffer without becoming cruel. Even when institutions, markets, or regimes prevail in fact, they do not finally define value. That conviction animates his novels, from the bleak end of Nineteen Eighty-Four to the bitter clarity of Animal Farm. Tragedy, for Orwell, becomes a moral instrument: a way of preserving faith in human worth when events give every reason to despair.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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