Is 'Journey's End' a Tragedy?

Yes it is. Next question. No, seriously: it is because it follows established laws of Greek (Ancient Greek) drama - see below. Also, it is a shocking dose of 'reality' for post-war audiences and it has one of the bleakest dramatic climaxes you will ever see outside of an episode of Eastenders. No, really.

The following is from http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/spectop007.html

The most famous of the Aristotelian rules were those relating to the so-called unities--of time, place, and action. The unity of time limits the supposed action to the duration, roughly, of a single day; unity of place limits it to one general locality; and the unity of action limits it to a single set of incidents which are related as cause and effect, "having a beginning, a middle, and an end."

Journey's End - Raleigh

We know that Raleigh comes into Act One as a naive, snivelling, wet-behind-the-ears schoolboy. We find him nearly as irritating as Stanhope does! However, R.C. Sherriff uses the character to show the effect of war on young men BEFORE OUR EYES. That's a very powerful dramatic device. The end contains more pathos than any play or film I've ever seen: it's two men trapped by fate, trapped by the emotional constraints of the age and situation and condemned to their fate by irresponsible and contemptuous military authority. Devastating.

Journey's End - Stanhope

The character of Stanhope is many things in one - young and yet old beyond his years; a bold leader, and yet more flawed than those under him; a charasmatic, understanding person and yet an aggressive man unable to deal with his feelings.

Journey's End - Osbourne

Osbourne is, if you like, the wise old owl of the play. He is mature and the most sensible character of the play. He is (to use a phrase that I don't want you to use) the most 'normal'. Don't miss the INTERTEXTUAL use of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the play (explained in this podcast). It's interesting to note that Osbourne is at least as much of a hero as Stanhope, but he is (on the surface at least) less devastated by the war.

Form and Structure of Journey's End

There's a lot of terminology in this podcast - so here's the spellings!

Artistotle's sturcture of a tragedy: INCENTTIVE MOMENT, leading through a complication (a tying up, or 'desis')to a CLIMAX. From there we go through an unravelling (or 'lusis') to a RESOLUTION (that's the end to you and me).

Aristotle's three unities of tragedy: (a) unity of time, (b) unity of place and (c) unity of action.

Three ingredients of a complex tragedy: (a) a 'change of fortune' (luck, life situation), (b) 'reversal of intention', and (c) 'recognition'. These all add together to create the 'catastrophe' - the tragic end to a play.

Great, eh?