E,

You might, as a remedy for what sounds to me like a malaise about a difficult world (an understandable reaction) consider an alternate scheme for conceiving of what happened at Virginia Tech.

Namely, that it was not a tragedy at all. Rather, it was a crime. With terrible consequences. Heartbreaking. Awful.

Does not that alter, even subtly, the manner of thinking about the event? A change from, analogically, the passive to the active tense. A tragedy happens; a crime is committed.

Further, what remedy exists for tragedy, really? Nothing too concrete, I think. Whereas that is not the case with crimes; we have a legal system to deal with these. In this case, Cho is dead; but for future such crimes, we have a mechanism to deal with it. We aren't left passively flailing around, as we are when a genuine tragedy happens. Nor do we not have a defined means of category: a crime, committed by a criminal, against the law, with legal consequence.

Etymology sheds light, too. Tragedy is classically thought of as the downfall of a great person to his/her own destiny. I.e. the "tragic flaw". Of course, today most language is muddled from such roots.

I'm not saying that crime instead of tragedy is a perfect, airtight substitution. Or that reasonable people can't disagree on this.

md

Definitely a crime - I have no problem with that. Nevertheles, tragic, from the perspective of the suffering caused.

Fair enough. I see a big difference between something being tragic versus being a tragedy. Much as there is difference between something being comedic, and it being a comedy. My sense is that many people see VTech as a tragedy, rather than something tragic.

md