tragic experience essay

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5 Ways to Make College Essays About Tragedy More Memorable

By Eric Eng

Difficult and personal topics of tragedy and loss aren’t easy for many people to talk about, let alone write about for others to read. This makes college essays about tragedy challenging for many applicants.

To be sure, a college essay on the death of a parent or death in a family can have a positive impact on a student’s application. The gravity of these subjects makes them impactful, full of emotions, and very captivating for admissions officers. However, a college essay about losing a loved one will only work if they’re done right. Since so many students experience tragedy and loss at some point in their lives, these topics can come across as generic.

Writing About Tragedy in the College Application Essay: Should It Be Done?

When preparing to write a meaningful, personal, and impactful college application essay, something tragic that’s happened in your life might seem like a fitting topic. It’s revealing, emotional, and raw. Well, you’ll hear a variety of different opinions when you ask whether or not painful college essays are a good idea.

Critics of sad college essays say that these subjects can come across as generic since many applicants struggle with similar experiences or issues. Tragedy is a universal phenomenon that humans experience, after all. However, another group will say that these stories are so personal and important that you’re doing yourself a disservice by not writing about them. Sad college essays are a great way to share a life struggle and what you learned from it.

So, what’s the real answer? Should you write a college essay about death or any tragedies? At AdmissionSight , we’ve helped hundreds of students write their winning college application essays, and this is a common topic that we’re asked about. Through our experience, we can confidently say that tragedy and loss are appropriate subjects for your college essay if – and only if – they’re approached carefully and with a clear sense of purpose.

The purpose of college essays about tragedy isn’t to garner sympathy, and a college essay about death or any essay about a tragic event won’t earn you any. If you choose to focus your essay on a tragic event, make sure that you can explain how the tragedy has affected you as a person and what you wish to do with that experience and learnings.

The Right Way to Write About Tragedy in College Application

If you’ve experienced tragedy or loss and wish to address it in your college application essay, you’ll need to approach the topic differently than you would other subjects. These sensitive topics require more tact and care than others. But, when done correctly, they can have a heartfelt impact and make your college application essay truly stand out. Here, we’ll explore some tips on how to write a college essay about losing a loved one or any tragedy.

1. Be open and honest.

When writing college essays about tragedy, some people may feel the need to alter the truth for various reasons. Some worry that being too blunt and open about their experiences might seem too forward, revealing, or uncomfortably raw.

On the other hand, others might feel the need to portray themselves as being more directly affected by the tragedy than they actually were. The ultimate goal is to focus on the aspect of the tragedy that had a lasting impact on you. What challenges have you overcome? How have you changed and grown as a result of the tragedy?

You shouldn’t feel the need to dress your story up or strip it down. Don’t write like you were impacted in ways that you weren’t. This can come across as insincere, and you’d be surprised how easy this is to detect in writing – especially when touching upon such serious topics. You also don’t have to be affected firsthand by a tragic event to have been impacted by it. If something truly affected you, it’ll come through in your writing no matter what happened.

2. Use the right language.

When addressing heavy topics in your college application essay, finding the right balance between authenticity and quality writing can be challenging. The success of your essay depends both on your chosen topic and how well you articulate it.

When writing about tragedy and loss, it’s important to express yourself sincerely while conveying genuine emotions and feelings. This means choosing words that reflect your true experiences and emotions, avoiding clichés, and being honest without being overly dramatic.

Use descriptive language to illustrate your experiences and emotions. Instead of simply stating how you felt, describe specific moments and details that convey your feelings. For example, instead of saying, “I was sad,” you might describe a particular moment that highlights your sorrow.

3. Connect it to the prompt.

Although colleges have essay prompts that are more personal in nature, it’s rare to find a prompt that’s related directly to college essays about tragedy. In general, universities won’t ask students to recount these personal events on their applications. They simply would now want applicants to write sad college essays. However, that doesn’t mean you won’t find plenty of open-ended prompts where these subjects can be appropriate.

In fact, it is common for universities to include questions that ask students to talk about formative experiences in their lives. No matter what kind of prompt you choose, just make sure your story fits the prompt.

For example, let’s say a college application essay prompt is asking you to talk about how you developed an interest in your field of study; perhaps you’re pursuing a degree in the medical field because you had a close friend who died of cancer. Their passing had such an impact on you that you decided to dedicate your life to helping those suffering from the same illness.

While the experience of loss and tragedy adds a powerful element to the response, it’s not the whole answer. It still needs to be connected to the original question. Don’t get so caught up in writing about the event that you forget to respond to the prompt.

4. Focus on yourself.

When you recount a tragic event or loss in your life, it’s often described as something that happened to you. Especially when dealing with losing a loved one, an applicant’s instinct is to focus on the individual rather than themselves. However, when writing college essays about tragedy, students must remember to talk about themselves. It might sound selfish and inappropriate, given the gravity of the event. 

However, admissions officers are interested in learning more about you through your essay. After, it is you who is applying for admission. If you spend the whole time talking about somebody else, you lose the chance to show the admission officers why you need to be accepted and what makes you a good fit for the said school.

How did the tragedy or loss affect you? How did you feel throughout the grieving process? Have you changed permanently since the experience? How is it impacting what you’re doing today? Has it altered your direction or goals in life? These are all pertinent questions that – if applicable to the prompt – should be included in your response.

You want to give admissions officers a glimpse into who you are as a person. That’s why it’s important to focus a good portion of your college essay about death and how this experience impacted you directly.

5. Be respectful.

One of the most important tips on how to approach tragedy and loss in a college essay is with a high level of respect. Some students are hesitant to write about these topics because of how personal and revealing they are. While your name will obviously be on the application, you don’t (and shouldn’t) need to include the names of other people involved in your story.

You can always use fake names to make the response flow better or leave out names altogether. Either way, you’ll want to remain as discreet and anonymous as possible. This isn’t only respectful to others involved, but it also demonstrates tact to admissions officers.

Don’t worry. You’re not going to lose any points for not being specific. Colleges are used to reading these stories. It’s common practice to omit some personal details. Besides, as we mentioned before, the most important part of your story is how you were affected by the process.

Sample College Essays About Tragedy and Loss

Now that we’ve explored some tips for writing college essays about tragedy more effectively for your application, it’s time to look at an actual example. Although the aforementioned tips are incredibly helpful, seeing an example of sad college essays is very informative. Read through this essay carefully and, considering the tips we mentioned, guess what we like so much about it. We’ll explain it in detail in the next section.

Written for the Common App college application essay “Tell us your story” prompt. This essay could work for prompts 1 and 7 for the Common App.

“They covered the precious mahogany coffin with a brown amalgam of rocks, decomposed organisms, and weeds. It was my turn to take the shovel, but I felt too ashamed to dutifully send her off when I had not properly said goodbye. I refused to throw dirt on her. I refused to let go of my grandmother, to accept a death I had not seen coming, to believe that an illness could not only interrupt but steal a beloved life.

When my parents finally revealed to me that my grandmother had been battling liver cancer, I was twelve and I was angry–mostly with myself. They had wanted to protect me–only six years old at the time–from the complex and morose concept of death. However, when the end inevitably arrived, I wasn’t trying to comprehend what dying was; I was trying to understand how I had been able to abandon my sick grandmother in favor of playing with friends and watching TV. Hurt that my parents had deceived me and resentful of my own oblivion, I committed myself to prevent such blindness from resurfacing.

I became desperately devoted to my education because I saw knowledge as the key to freeing myself from the chains of ignorance. While learning about cancer in school, I promised myself that I would memorize every fact and absorb every detail in textbooks and online medical journals. And as I began to consider my future, I realized that what I learned in school would allow me to silence that which had silenced my grandmother. However, I was focused not on learning itself but on good grades and high test scores. I started to believe that academic perfection would be the only way to redeem myself in her eyes–to make up for what I had not done as a granddaughter.

However, a simple walk on a hiking trail behind my house made me open my own eyes to the truth. Over the years, everything–even honoring my grandmother–had become second to school and grades. As my shoes humbly tapped against the earth, the towering trees blackened by the forest fire a few years ago, the faintly colorful pebbles embedded in the sidewalk, and the wispy white clouds hanging in the sky reminded me of my small though nonetheless significant part in a larger whole that is humankind and this Earth. Before I could resolve my guilt, I had to broaden my perspective of the world as well as my responsibilities to my fellow humans.

Volunteering at a cancer treatment center has helped me discover my path. When I see patients trapped in not only the hospital but also a moment in time by their diseases, I talk to them. For six hours a day, three times a week, Ivana is surrounded by IV stands, empty walls, and busy nurses that quietly yet constantly remind her of her breast cancer. Her face is pale and tired, yet kind–not unlike my grandmother’s. I need only to smile and say hello to see her brighten up as life returns to her face. Upon our first meeting, she opened up about her two sons, her hometown, and her knitting group–no mention of her disease. Without even standing up, the three of us—Ivana, me, and my grandmother–had taken a walk together.

Cancer, as powerful and invincible as it may seem, is a mere fraction of a person’s life. It’s easy to forget when one’s mind and body are so weak and vulnerable. I want to be there as an oncologist to remind them to take a walk once in a while, to remember that there’s so much more to life than a disease. While I physically treat their cancer, I want to lend patients emotional support and mental strength to escape the interruption and continue living. Through my work, I can accept the shovel without burying my grandmother’s memory.”

What we like about this essay

We do not often come across college essays about tragedy and loss that hit all the right points. Generally, these essays are too cliche despite their serious contents. Here, we’ll outline some things we loved about this essay and why we chose it as an example of a great college essay about death:

• The writer is able to broach a serious topic such as death, cancer, and the loss of a loved one with positivity and a sense of hope.
• The essay focuses on how the applicant was impacted by the experience more than it does the actual experience itself.
• It includes all of the details needed to convey the message without exceeding the word limit or becoming too focused on the specifics.
• The applicant talks specifically about how their tragic experiences impacted them personally while explaining how they’ll move forward in the future after this change.
• The essay describes how the tragedy and loss affect what they want to study in college, helping admission officers make a connection between this event and the applicant’s plans for university.
• There are enough details and personality without being too revealing to make it uncomfortable or awkward for the reader.

Ultimately, always remember this when trying to write a college essay about losing a loved one: the essay should avoid listing challenges or tragedies without reflecting on how these events have shaped who the student is today. One of the hardest parts of being a college admissions guide is telling someone that their family tragedy alone won’t secure their admission.

Writing sad college essays without hindsight and foresight will never work. However, it can be compelling if the student explains what they learned from such a harrowing experience. Everyone faces challenges, but it’s how these challenges shape a person that truly matters.

Need help getting into top-tier colleges?

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AdmissionSight is the leading college admissions specialist with years of experience successfully helping students like you gain admittance to their chosen universities. Our essay editing services can help you stand out amongst the crowd of applicants, even at top-tier universities.

Contact AdmissionSight to learn more about the services we offer and how we can help you.

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5 moving, beautiful essays about death and dying

by Sarah Kliff

It is never easy to contemplate the end-of-life, whether its own our experience or that of a loved one.

This has made a recent swath of beautiful essays a surprise. In different publications over the past few weeks, I’ve stumbled upon writers who were contemplating final days. These are, no doubt, hard stories to read. I had to take breaks as I read about Paul Kalanithi’s experience facing metastatic lung cancer while parenting a toddler, and was devastated as I followed Liz Lopatto’s contemplations on how to give her ailing cat the best death possible. But I also learned so much from reading these essays, too, about what it means to have a good death versus a difficult end from those forced to grapple with the issue. These are four stories that have stood out to me recently, alongside one essay from a few years ago that sticks with me today.

My Own Life | Oliver Sacks

As recently as last month, popular author and neurologist Oliver Sacks was in great health, even swimming a mile every day. Then, everything changed: the 81-year-old was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. In a beautiful op-ed , published in late February in the New York Times, he describes his state of mind and how he’ll face his final moments. What I liked about this essay is how Sacks describes how his world view shifts as he sees his time on earth getting shorter, and how he thinks about the value of his time.

Before I go | Paul Kalanithi

Kalanthi began noticing symptoms — “weight loss, fevers, night sweats, unremitting back pain, cough” — during his sixth year of residency as a neurologist at Stanford. A CT scan revealed metastatic lung cancer. Kalanthi writes about his daughter, Cady and how he “probably won’t live long enough for her to have a memory of me.” Much of his essay focuses on an interesting discussion of time, how it’s become a double-edged sword. Each day, he sees his daughter grow older, a joy. But every day is also one that brings him closer to his likely death from cancer.

As I lay dying | Laurie Becklund

Becklund’s essay was published posthumonously after her death on February 8 of this year. One of the unique issues she grapples with is how to discuss her terminal diagnosis with others and the challenge of not becoming defined by a disease. “Who would ever sign another book contract with a dying woman?” she writes. “Or remember Laurie Becklund, valedictorian, Fulbright scholar, former Times staff writer who exposed the Salvadoran death squads and helped The Times win a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1992 L.A. riots? More important, and more honest, who would ever again look at me just as Laurie?”

Everything I know about a good death I learned from my cat | Liz Lopatto

Dorothy Parker was Lopatto’s cat, a stray adopted from a local vet. And Dorothy Parker, known mostly as Dottie, died peacefully when she passed away earlier this month. Lopatto’s essay is, in part, about what she learned about end-of-life care for humans from her cat. But perhaps more than that, it’s also about the limitations of how much her experience caring for a pet can transfer to caring for another person.

Yes, Lopatto’s essay is about a cat rather than a human being. No, it does not make it any easier to read. She describes in searing detail about the experience of caring for another being at the end of life. “Dottie used to weigh almost 20 pounds; she now weighs six,” Lopatto writes. “My vet is right about Dottie being close to death, that it’s probably a matter of weeks rather than months.”

Letting Go | Atul Gawande

“Letting Go” is a beautiful, difficult true story of death. You know from the very first sentence — “Sara Thomas Monopoli was pregnant with her first child when her doctors learned that she was going to die” — that it is going to be tragic. This story has long been one of my favorite pieces of health care journalism because it grapples so starkly with the difficult realities of end-of-life care.

In the story, Monopoli is diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, a surprise for a non-smoking young woman. It’s a devastating death sentence: doctors know that lung cancer that advanced is terminal. Gawande knew this too — Monpoli was his patient. But actually discussing this fact with a young patient with a newborn baby seemed impossible.

"Having any sort of discussion where you begin to say, 'look you probably only have a few months to live. How do we make the best of that time without giving up on the options that you have?' That was a conversation I wasn't ready to have," Gawande recounts of the case in a new Frontline documentary .

What’s tragic about Monopoli’s case was, of course, her death at an early age, in her 30s. But the tragedy that Gawande hones in on — the type of tragedy we talk about much less — is how terribly Monopoli’s last days played out.

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Oedipus by Sophocles: a Tragic Hero

This essay about Oedipus in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” positions him as the quintessential tragic hero, exploring the themes of human nature, fate, and the quest for truth. Through Oedipus’ story of unintentional self-destruction—fulfilling a prophecy by killing his father and marrying his mother—Sophocles sheds light on the complexities of human existence and the inevitable encounter with destiny. The narrative doesn’t just focus on Oedipus’ downfall but emphasizes his humanity, resilience, and the profound burden of awareness he carries. It underlines the character’s relatability through his flaws, making his tale resonate with the struggles inherent in the human condition. The essay reflects on how Oedipus’ tale is not merely a story of tragedy but a reflection on the courage required to face harrowing truths, making it a timeless piece that explores the essence of being human and the indomitable spirit of the tragic hero.

How it works

In the grand and often bewildering theater of literature, where characters both mighty and meek vie for our attention, the tragic hero holds a special place in our hearts and imaginations. Sophocles’ Oedipus, the beleaguered king of Thebes, is one of those characters who’s hard to forget once you’ve met him. Through the story of “Oedipus Rex,” Sophocles doesn’t just tell us a tale from a bygone era; he holds up a mirror to the human condition, reminding us of our perpetual struggle against the odds.

Oedipus is a man on a mission. Determined to rid Thebes of a devastating plague, he ends up uncovering a web of truths that eventually leads to his own undoing. The prophecy that haunted his cradle—killing his father and marrying his mother—unravels despite his best efforts to dodge destiny. It’s this journey, fraught with good intentions and tragic missteps, that cements Oedipus as the epitome of a tragic hero. His story isn’t just about the pitfalls of fate; it’s a deep dive into the human psyche, our fears, and the lengths we’ll go to for the truth.

But Sophocles’ genius lies not in making us mere spectators of Oedipus’ downfall. Instead, he invites us to walk alongside Oedipus, to feel his determination, his despair, and ultimately, his acceptance of his fate. Oedipus isn’t a hero because he triumphs; he’s a hero because he embodies the resilience of the human spirit in the face of insurmountable odds. His tale doesn’t just tug at our heartstrings; it raises questions about free will, knowledge, and the human capacity for suffering and redemption.

What makes Oedipus stand out in the crowded arena of tragic heroes isn’t just his tragic flaw or his downfall; it’s his humanity. His pride, his mistakes, and his quest for truth make him relatable. He’s not diminished by his errors; instead, they render him more human, more like us. The tragedy of Oedipus is not just in the sequence of events leading to his exile but in the burden of awareness he’s forced to bear. His journey towards this harrowing enlightenment, towards facing the truth no matter how ugly, is where his heroism truly lies.

The enduring appeal of Oedipus’ story is a tribute to Sophocles’ understanding of the human heart and his ability to weave a narrative that’s as relevant now as it was in ancient Greece. Through Oedipus, Sophocles explores with a tender yet unflinching gaze, the themes that define our existence: fate, the search for truth, and the enduring human spirit. Oedipus’ saga resonates with us because it is, at its core, a reflection of our own fears, aspirations, and the eternal struggle for meaning and identity in a world that often seems governed by capricious fates.

So, as we turn the last page of “Oedipus Rex,” we’re left with more than just a story of a king’s fall from grace. We’re reminded of the power of narrative to delve into the essence of what it means to be human. Oedipus remains a beacon of the tragic hero archetype, not just for the magnitude of his suffering, but for his courage in confronting it. His tale, etched by Sophocles’ hand, continues to echo through the ages, a poignant reminder of literature’s ability to capture the beauty and tragedy of the human experience.

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Sophocles’ Oedipus as a Tragic Hero Essay

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What makes Oedipus a Tragic hero? What makes his predicament fascinating rather than merely horrifying?

Oedipus Rex is a great ancient Greek tragedy written by Sophocles in which the tragic story of the king of Phoebe is revealed. His destiny is complex and fascinating. His father, Laius, predicted that his son would kill him. That is why little Oedipus was left in the mountains to die. However, he is found and raised by Polybus of Corinth (Sophocles 11).

Unfortunately, it does not help Oedipus to avoid his destiny. When he returns to Phoebe, he kills his father and marries his mother. The story has a tragic end, but it is not the main thing that makes Oedipus a tragic hero. However, his moral disposition, internal struggle, and doomed attempts to go against evil and fate are the main aspects that help us to consider him a tragic character (“Oedipus as a Tragic Hero”). He opposes the will of ancient gods and loses, but this struggle makes his predicament fascinating. Oedipus does not know that he kills his father and marries his mother; the only motif he follows is to protect people he loves and become happy (Wood 76). That is why all his actions are not merely horrifying.

Identify and explain the different types of irony in Oedipus Rex.

The given story is also based on irony which is introduced to emphasize Oedipus sufferings and predicaments. In the majority of cases, it comes from his ignorance as he does not know the background of the prophecy. For this reason, the dramatic irony could be found in the fact that the audience knows the events which are unknown to the protagonist. We could understand everything and be terrified of his actions. Besides, there is also the verbal irony that could be found in Oedipus words. He says that Laius murders should be punished (Sophocles 53), but we know who kills the King of Phoebe. Therefore, Oedipus attempts to avoid destiny and protect his parents could be considered the tragic irony (Dems). He does not know that Polybus is not his real father and returns to Phoebe where he kills Laius, who also tried to prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled. Additionally, Oedipus arrival to Phoebe is another kind of irony, a situational one (Dems). Trying to escape he comes to the city where the prophecy should be fulfilled.

Evaluate Oedipus’s actions. Is he to blame for what happens?

Cogitating about the given story, we could say that Oedipus could hardly be blamed for all his actions. He is a murderer. However, it was a cruel epoch and violence was one of the ways to solve conflicts. Though, he did not know that Laius was his father, as well as Jocasta, was his mother. He just wanted to protect his family and escaped to another state. However, his ignorance and some mysterious will resulted in the tragic events that happened during the story (Gaillard 98). Oedipus turned out to be helpless in the face of destiny and became parricide.

What is the purpose of the scene in which Oedipus bids farewell to Antigone and Ismene? Explain.

Having discovered the fact that Laius was his father, Oedipus should leave the city because of his decree. Additionally, he is one of the main causes of all misfortunes that it experiences. However, he has two favorite daughters, Antigone and Ismene. Oedipus perfectly realizes the fact that his actions and his life affected their future greatly. They are now cursed and could hardly be happy (“The Story of King Oedipus”). For this reason, the scene of his farewell has a great symbolic meaning. When saying goodbye, he realizes that their lives would be complex and tragic. However, Oedipus is helpless to help his daughters.

Works Cited

Dems, Kristina. “Oedipus Rex: The Three Types of Irony.” bright hub education , Web.

Gaillard, Thierry. Oedipus Reborn, Ancient Traditions and Transgenerational Perspectives . Ecodition, 2014.

“Oedipus as a Tragic Hero.” Bachelorandmaster , Web.

Sophocles. The Oedipus Cycle: An English Version . Harcourt, 1949.

“The Story of King Oedipus.” erenow , Web.

Wood, Rebeca. Tragic Legacies: Investigating Spectres of the Past in Literature: A Comparative Literary Analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Amazon Services International, 2014.

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Life lessons learned through tragedy

The biggest tragedies that we encounter teach us the biggest lessons in life.

Unfortunate as circumstances can be, there is always something to learn from tragic experiences even though we might not realize it at first. Depending on the magnitude of the situation, it can take longer to realize this. But the lesson(s) learned can be life changing and in some cases, life-saving.

I’d like to share with you the saddest, but also the most life-changing moment of my life. Not because I seek sympathy, but because I want to spread awareness. If my message changes even one person’s outlook on life then I consider it successful.

Four years ago, I lost my only sibling and older brother, Kurt Baker, to a combination of alcohol and prescription pills. He was just 22 years old.

He had moved from our hometown of Sacramento to San Diego with his best friend when he was 19 years old and attended San Diego Mesa College. He and his best friend soon joined a fraternity, Sigma Pi, where they met a lot of new people and made a lot of new friends. My brother later ended up moving into the fraternity house when he was 21 (where he died).

His cause of death might lead some to assume that he was a druggie, which couldn’t possibly be any further from the truth. The worst part of explaining his death to others is that when I tell people how he died, I feel like they automatically assume he was a horrible person. I feel like people judge my brother based on the circumstances of his death rather than how he lived his life each and every day.

It kills me that I feel the need to explain to people that he wasn’t a junkie. If you ever met him you would know he wasn’t that type of person at all. He made a stupid, drunk decision that had consequences worse than he could’ve possibly imagined.

My brother loved to have a good time, but one night he over-did it. This is a mistake that a lot of people make, yet live to tell the tale. Others, like my brother, aren’t so fortunate and don’t have the opportunity to learn from their mistake.

Have you ever been so drunk that you blacked out or don’t remember what you did? Hasn’t everyone? This common mistake is what led to my brother taking a prescription pill that someone gave him that night; a pill that ultimately ended his life .

The problem with young adults, teenagers, and heck pretty much everyone is that we have a feeling of invincibility. That we can do whatever we want and still wake up the next morning.  We are spoiled in the sense that we are alive and able to do the things we do on a daily basis. We take for granted our ability to feel emotion and have relationships.

Life is too short so enjoy the little things. The long days at school that we all dread (or dreaded) so much, the long work days, doing your laundry, going to the grocery store, etc. Everything we do on a daily basis is all a part of an awesome experience that we get one shot at. Nobody is promised a tomorrow, so always tell your family and friends you love them.

We were as close as siblings could be considering we our 5 and a half-year age difference. I’m not saying that he didn’t make fun of me or beat me up, because he definitely did plenty of that. Those are the things that as the younger brother you get used to (especially since he was always much bigger than I).

What sucks the most, I had just turned 16 when he passed and I was finally becoming old enough where he talked to me like a friend instead of a little brother. I know that if he was alive today we would be even closer than we were before because we could open up to each other about more mature topics.

He lived with a sense of positivity and happiness unlike any other person I’ve ever met and that is something I try to carry with me each and every day. I never remember him being in a bad mood other than if he was losing on the basketball court, which is where we spent a lot of our time together.

Sometimes it takes something terrible happening, such as death, for us to get the wake-up call and realize what’s most important in life. As sad and difficult as this time was for me in my life, I have matured so much as a person since then and now I view life in a completely different way.

I have come to the realization that life is a privilege so we should cherish it. By cherishing our lives I don’t mean buying the nicest material items to make us feel good about ourselves. I mean doing the little things every day to remind those that we love how much we care about them.

Drug and Alcohol related death statistics. 

How dangerous is it to mix prescription pills and alcohol?

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Tragedy in Literature: Lesson Plans & Techniques

What is tragedy in literature, how to introduce tragedy in literature, lesson plan for teaching tragedy.

• Technique one to teach tragedy
• Technique two to teach tragedy
• Technique three to teach tragedy
• Lesson plan and technique review
• Additional resources and readings

When it comes to teaching literature, one often meets a hurdle while introducing the concept of tragedy. It's a complex and layered theme that brings depth to many beloved classic and contemporary works. But don't worry! With the right literature lesson plans, teaching tragedy can become an engaging and insightful experience for both you and your students.

Let's dive straight into the heart of the matter. In simple terms, tragedy is a genre of literature that presents characters who face significant suffering or misfortune, often leading to a sad or disastrous ending. What makes it unique, though, is that these tragic events often stem from the characters' own flaws, choices, or actions. It's not just about bad things happening; it's about human nature leading to those events. Understanding this becomes the cornerstone of teaching tragedy in our literature lesson plans.

Here are a few key elements that make up a tragedy in literature:

• Tragic Hero: The central character, often of noble birth, who experiences downfall due to their own mistakes or flaws. Think of characters like Hamlet or Othello.
• Downfall: A series of unfortunate events that lead to the tragic hero's demise. This isn't always physical death; sometimes it's a fall from grace or loss of status and reputation.
• Catharsis: The emotional release or purging that the audience experiences at the end of a tragedy. It's the moment of realisation, where the audience feels pity or fear, thus gaining a deeper understanding of life and human nature.

Remember, tragedy isn't about depressing stories. It's about teaching us valuable life lessons through the powerful medium of storytelling. So, as you build your literature lesson plans for teaching tragedy, keep these elements in mind and focus on the human aspect of these stories.

Teaching tragedy in literature is not about making your students feel sad—it's about helping them understand the depth and complexity of human emotions and actions. Here's a step-by-step guide that you can incorporate into your literature lesson plans to introduce the concept of tragedy effectively.

• Start with definitions: Begin your lesson by defining tragedy. Use simple language and relatable examples to break down the concept. You could use characters from popular culture who face tragic circumstances as a result of their own actions.
• Discuss examples: Next, present examples of tragedies from literature. Classic works like 'Romeo and Juliet' or 'Macbeth' offer rich instances of tragic plots. Discuss the key elements of tragedy in these works and how they contribute to the overall story.
• Encourage participation: Get your students involved in the discussion. Ask them to share their thoughts on the story, the characters, and the outcome. This will not only make the lesson more interactive but also help them understand the concept better.
• Assign reading: Choose a tragedy for your students to read as homework. This could be a short story, a play, or a novel depending on the age group and reading level of your students. Encourage them to identify the tragic elements in the story as they read.
• Review and discuss: In the following lesson, review the story and discuss the tragic elements identified by the students. This will reinforce their understanding of the concept and help them apply it to other works of literature.

Remember, the goal is to help your students understand and appreciate the role of tragedy in literature, not to make them experts overnight. Patience, practice, and participation are the keys to successful learning.

Developing literature lesson plans for teaching tragedy requires a thoughtful approach. Here is a basic lesson plan format you might find useful.

• Objective: Start by clearly defining what you want your students to learn. In this case, the objective could be to understand the concept of tragedy in literature and identify its key elements in a given text.
• Introduction: Begin the lesson by revisiting the definition of tragedy in literature. Discuss the significance of tragedy in shaping characters and driving plotlines in stories.
• Discussion: Introduce a piece of tragic literature, such as Sophocles' 'Oedipus Rex' or Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman'. Discuss the overall plot, main characters, and key events. Explain how these elements contribute to the tragic outcome of the story.
• Interactive Activity: Plan an interactive activity to ensure the students are engaged and understanding the concept. This could be a group discussion, a quiz, or a creative writing task where students draft a tragic ending for a story.
• Conclusion: Wrap up the lesson by summarizing the main points discussed. Encourage students to share their thoughts and reflections on the concept of tragedy.
• Homework: For homework, assign another piece of tragic literature. Ask students to identify and write about the tragic elements in the story as they read.
• Evaluation: In the following class, review the homework, discuss the tragic elements identified by the students, and evaluate their understanding of the concept.

Remember, teaching tragedy in literature is about making students understand that these stories are not just about sorrow and despair, but also about human resilience, courage, and the indomitable human spirit.

Technique One to Teach Tragedy

One effective technique for teaching tragedy in literature is the Comparison Method . As the name suggests, this technique involves comparing tragic literature with other genres, and it's a great way to help students understand the unique characteristics of tragic stories.

Start by selecting a tragic piece of literature and a non-tragic one—let's say Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' and J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'. Both stories involve young characters and pivotal life events, but their outcomes and the emotions they evoke are vastly different.

Guide your students through both pieces, focusing on elements like plot, character development, conflict, and resolution. By comparing and contrasting these elements, students will see first-hand how tragedy differs from other genres. They'll understand that while tragedy often involves characters dealing with immense struggles, it also illuminates the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

Remember, the aim of this technique is not to prefer one genre over another, but to help students appreciate the variety in literature. It's about showing them how even though 'Romeo and Juliet' ends in a heart-wrenching tragedy, it's still a captivating and meaningful story that has endured for centuries.

So next time you're crafting literature lesson plans for teaching tragedy, consider using the Comparison Method. It's a practical and engaging way to help your students grasp the essence of tragic literature.

Technique Two to Teach Tragedy

Another compelling method to bring tragedy to life in your literature lesson plans is the Historical Context Technique . This technique dives into the historical and cultural backdrop of the tragic work, providing students a rich context to fully grasp the depth and impact of the tragedy.

Take Sophocles' 'Oedipus Rex' for example—an ancient Greek tragedy. Instead of focusing merely on the narrative, delve into the historical era in which the play was written. Discuss the cultural beliefs, societal norms and values of ancient Greece. By doing so, you bring to light the relevance and significance of 'Oedipus Rex' as a tragedy in its time.

Explain how Greek tragedies often reflected societal challenges and moral dilemmas of the time. Discuss how 'Oedipus Rex' explores themes of fate, free will, and moral responsibility, topics deeply ingrained in the ancient Greek psyche.

Understanding the historical context not only enriches the students' comprehension of the tragedy but also cultivates empathy and critical thinking. It enables them to see beyond the text, fostering an appreciation for how literature mirrors life and society.

Remember, when you're developing literature lesson plans: teaching tragedy goes beyond the narrative. It's also about connecting the text to the larger world, making it a timeless learning experience.

Technique Three to Teach Tragedy

For our third technique in teaching tragedy, we're going to explore the world of storytelling. Storytelling is a powerful tool in any literature lesson plan, especially when teaching tragedy. This method is all about the Personal Connection Technique .

Everyone loves a good story, and students are no exception. When teaching works of tragedy such as 'Romeo and Juliet' or 'Macbeth', it can be beneficial to relate the stories to real-life situations. This helps students understand the emotional weight and consequences of the characters' tragic decisions.

For instance, you could start by sharing a story about star-crossed lovers from real life or modern media, linking it back to 'Romeo and Juliet'. This helps students to see that the themes of forbidden love, family rivalry, and tragic consequence aren't just confined to the pages of a Shakespearean play—they're issues people deal with in reality.

You could also bring in stories of ambition gone wrong or the destructive power of guilt when discussing 'Macbeth'. Have students reflect on times when they've experienced similar emotions. By connecting literature to personal experiences, you're not only teaching tragedy, but also helping students grasp the universal human experiences that make tragedies so poignant and timeless.

Ultimately, when creating literature lesson plans: teaching tragedy is about more than just recounting stories of woe—it's about revealing the shared human experience and teaching empathy and understanding.

Lesson Plan and Technique Review

So, we've covered a lot of ground in our exploration of literature lesson plans: teaching tragedy. Let's take a moment to review what we've learned.

First, we defined what tragedy is in literature: it's a form of drama where the protagonist suffers a major downfall, often due to their own actions or flaws. We learned how to introduce this concept by starting with familiar stories and gradually introducing more complex themes.

Then, we discussed our lesson plan for teaching tragedy. We highlighted the importance of guiding students to identify the elements of tragedy in various works, and suggested activities like group discussions, close reading exercises, and essay writing to deepen their understanding.

We've also shared three effective techniques for teaching tragedy:

• The Character Analysis Technique, where students delve into the motivations and flaws of tragic heroes.
• The Comparative Analysis Technique, which involves comparing and contrasting different tragic works to highlight common themes and unique interpretations.
• And finally, the Personal Connection Technique, where students connect themes of tragedy to their own lives and experiences, fostering empathy and understanding.

Remember, the goal isn't just to teach students about tragedy—it's to help them see the human condition reflected in these stories, and to spark thoughtful discussions about themes that are still relevant today.

As you continue to develop your literature lesson plans, teaching tragedy will become second nature. And remember, there's no one-size-fits-all approach. Feel free to adapt these techniques as needed to best fit your students' needs and learning styles.

Additional Resources and Readings

Now that we've explored how to create literature lesson plans focused on teaching tragedy, you're well on your way to engaging your students in compelling, thought-provoking discussions. But the learning doesn't stop here—there's a wealth of additional resources and readings available to further deepen your understanding and enrich your lessons.

If you're looking for more texts to include in your literature lesson plans, consider works such as 'Romeo and Juliet' by William Shakespeare or 'Things Fall Apart' by Chinua Achebe. These classics offer rich examples of tragedy that can spark insightful discussions among your students.

For additional resources, consider turning to professional organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) or the International Literacy Association (ILA). Both offer a variety of resources, from lesson plans to research articles, to support your teaching practice.

Another valuable resource is the Teaching Channel, a website that features videos of effective teaching strategies in action. This could prove particularly useful when looking for new ways to teach tragedy in literature.

Lastly, don't forget the power of peer collaboration. Reach out to fellow educators—both within your school and online—to share ideas, resources, and best practices. After all, we're all in this together, working to inspire a love of literature in our students.

Remember, teaching tragedy in literature isn't about finding the 'right' answers. It's about fostering a space for students to engage with complex themes, develop their critical thinking skills, and connect literature to their own lives. With these resources and readings, you're well-equipped to do just that. Happy teaching!

If you're interested in further exploring the theme of tragedy in literature and storytelling, you might find Reshelshah's workshop, ' Documentary Treatment: The Last Act ,' to be a fascinating resource. In this workshop, you'll learn about the significance of the final act in storytelling and how to effectively convey tragedy in a documentary format. Enhance your understanding of tragedy in literature and expand your storytelling techniques by joining this workshop.

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The Influence Of A Tragic Experience On Human Development

Table of contents, death of a loved one (september 11, 2017), physical development, emotional development, intellectual development, social development.

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Aspects of tragedy - exemplar student response and commentary

Below you will find an exemplar student response to a Section C question in the specimen assessment materials, followed by an examiner commentary on the response.

Paper 1A, Section C

Sample question.

'At the heart of the tragic experience is an overwhelming sense of shame.'

To what extent do you agree with this view in relation to two texts you have studied?

Remember to include in your answer relevant comment on the ways the writers have shaped meanings.

Band 5 response

Whilst it can be said that shame, as experienced by the protagonists in Richard II and Keats' poetry (and readers and audiences) is significant, to what extent it is overwhelming and at the heart of the tragic experience may be debated.

It could certainly be argued that Richard's shame at the end of the play is an overwhelming aspect of the tragic experience. He appears to feel great shame at the extent to which he has been degraded by Bolingbroke imagining the way in which he will be forced to exchange his 'large kingdom for a little grave', where the juxtaposition clearly illustrates the extent of his tragic fall from monarch to a state of insignificance. Likewise, he imagines how he may be 'buried in the King's highway…where subjects' feet/ May hourly trample,' clearly illustrating the depth of his degradation – rather than the pomp and ceremony that should accompany a state funeral, he will be ignominiously trampled upon by those he should have led. Richard's shame at the extent to which he has been brought low is further verified when he is forced to publicly abdicate to Bolingbroke in the tragic climax of the play. When he looks in the mirror, he only sees 'a brittle glory', an image that conveys the extent to which he has been broken and his very sense of identity stolen by his cousin whom he refers to as the 'silent king' even before he has been crowned. There is a deep sense of shame in this public enactment of his overthrow, which Richard dramatically takes full of advantage of in demanding that Bolingbroke take the crown from his hands. Richard recognises that their roles have now reversed. Whilst he falls down 'unseen and full of water', Bolingbroke rises as the new sun that once epitomised his reign as the divine legitimate monarch. The sense of shame Richard experiences thereby casts him as a tragic victim with whom the audience sympathise given the illegitimacy of Bolingbroke's acquisition of the crown as well as our knowledge of the future rebellions that this will give rise to. It could also be said that the audience too experiences a sense of shame at witnessing Richard brought so low, potentially making us feel an element of shameful complicity. This is most evident in the final scenes where we witness Richard's poignant soliloquising in prison. His description of 'crushing penury' and belief that he has become 'nothing,' a word that is resonantly repeated, cast him as a figure for whom we feel great pity as we empathise with the shame and ignominy he feels. Moreover, his onstage botched death in a prison cell, at the hands of servants, just at the moment when he reminds us that he is king, (a birthright that cannot be denied), places deep shame on his captors and further encourages us to sympathise with Richard as a tragic victim perhaps more 'sinned against than sinning'.

A similar sense of shame could be seen at the heart of the knight's tragic experience in ' La Belle Dame Sans Merci' . He too has been brought low by an adversary who should have been his inferior and seems to be deeply ashamed of both his fall and what he has lost as a result. This is evident in his plaintive wail, 'Ah woe betide!' which in its exclamatory quality could be seen as a painful exhalation of all that he has lost. He should be a great knight, a character we associate with bravery and strength and yet his experience with the elfin woman has reduced him to a state of inertia and weakness. He is thus described by Keats' narrator as 'alone and palely loitering' as if all manly vigour has been sapped from him, which is ironic considering his status as a knight. Importantly, it appears that this is not a state from which he can escape given the circular structure of the poem which could be said to convey his continual state of degradation. The shame at his degradation is further suggested by the fact he remains on 'the cold hillside', a significant setting, removed from humanity and anyone who might see the extent of his fall. Like Richard, he is therefore cast as a tragic victim with whom we have great sympathy given his evident fall from high stature to 'crushing penury' and woe.

Another aspect of shame that is central to the tragic nature of Richard II is Bolingbroke's feelings concerning Richard's fall. In many regards, he is the saviour of the play who rescues England from a state of corruption where the garden is 'swarming with caterpillars' and the king is 'wasteful'. Yet, Bolingbroke is also Richard's antagonist and he feels shame at his part in Richard's usurpation and death. When he hears of Richard's death he claims to 'hate the murderer, love him murdered', the balanced phrases, use of contrast and focus on murder, suggesting a deep ambiguity. There is perhaps shame in his reference to Exton, the wielder of the knife, as 'Cain', an appellation that subconsciously he may well be applying to himself as Richard's kinsman and the real cause of his death. Moreover, the image of his blood stained hands is clearly reflective of the guilt and shame he feels at the murder of the former monarch. Although his desire for atonement (he'll 'make a voyage to the Holy Land' to wash the blood from his guilty hand) is diluted by the fact we know, historically, that he never made this journey, the sympathy and simplicity with which he speaks still convey an abiding sense of shame in his role of the fall of the eponymous character and as such, cast him in a more sympathetic and even heroic light.

In a similar way, it could be argued that both Lycius and Lamia's sense of shame overwhelm Keats' tragic story. Lycius could be said to experience an element of shame when he rejects his mentor and teacher, Apollonius, and fails to invite him to his wedding. Muffling his face, 'Lycius shrank closer, as they met and past' forcing Lamia to ask why he blinds himself before Apollonius' 'quick eyes'. When Apollonius appears, we are told Lycius blushes and greets him with 'reconciling words', ashamed of his neglect and rejection. This in turn perhaps makes us question Lycius' innocence and status as pure victim. Likewise, Lamia clearly feels shame in the manner in which she beguiles her lover and hides her true nature from him. This is why she is so reluctant for them to marry and to leave the safety of their bower. Moreover, when Lycius discovers the truth, we are told, 'with a frightful scream she vanished', perhaps suggesting that the depth of her shame has led her to flee from the piercing eyes of those that have witnessed her demise. Thus Lamia's sense of shame also complicates her role as a villain and rather casts her in a sympathetic light, much like Bolingbroke. Their grief and shame at the deaths of figures they love, but whose demise they have been responsible for thus casts them as victims as well as villains in the wider tragic picture.

Shame could also be seen as overwhelming in the manner in which it informs the tragedy in ' Isabella '.  Whilst it is Lorenzo's shame at his lowly status that initially retards their love affair, it is her brothers' shame that she should marry someone of such lowly status that propels the tragic climax – Lorenzo's murder. They are described as, 'nigh mad/ That he, the servant of their trade designs/ Should in their sister's love be blithe and glad.' Such feelings are the motivating force for their actions; the brothers are absorbed by their absolute pride in their social position and fearful of the shame of the social stigma their sister's marriage to a servant could bring. Their murder of Lorenzo is the tragic climax that then brings about Isabella's suffering and grief.

Likewise, it could be argued that a similar feeling of shame motivates Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke is ashamed by the manner in which Richard steals his land and titles with no legal prerogative. York is shocked by Richard's shameless act, telling him he 'wrongly seize[s]' Bolingbroke's 'rights'. Although, Shakespeare is ambiguous about the reasons for Bolingbroke's return from exile, it is clear that Richard's taking of his lands and the shame that is brought on his family is the obvious motivation for Bolingbroke's return. He questions York as to whether he will 'permit that I shall stand condemned…my rights and royalties/ Plucked from my arms', where the emotive verb has connotations of theft.

On the other hand, it could be argued that far from shame being overwhelming in Richard II , it is actually Richard's shameless behaviour that brings about the tragic events. The opening tournament in Scene III is clearly stage managed by Richard in order to illustrate his supremacy and because he seemingly and shamelessly enjoys the manipulation of those he regards as beneath him. Despite the life threatening situation for Mowbray and Bolingbroke, Richard speaks flippantly having been unable to hear their complaints earlier because 'our leisure' would not allow him to convey the disregard with which he holds both appellants. Moreover, his mocking response to Bolingbroke of 'how high a pitch his resolution soars' is, in its hyperbolic quality, intended to belittle the man whom he knows is in the right. Yet just at the moment of battle, Richard throws down his warder as if drawing out the dramatic tension in order to prove his prowess. Likewise, his treatment of his subjects and land is certainly shameless: he freely admits that it is as a result of 'too great a court/ And liberal largesse' that the crown is out of funds for war and thus he flippantly issues 'blank charters' and extorts money from the nobles of the land. It is this shameless treatment of those, who as king, he should secure, protect and enlarge, that brings about his tragic downfall and the reason, moreover, why our sympathies as viewers lie largely with Bolingbroke for the opening half of the play.

Equally, it could be questioned as to whether shame is truly at the heart of the tragic experience in ' Isabella '. Here it is surely love that is overwhelming and that which brings about Isabella's terrible grief so 'she died forlorn/ Mourning her pot of basil to the last'. She clutches onto this one symbol as the last residue of her love and it is this undying adoration for Lorenzo that is central in the poem. A similar argument could be made in ' Lamia ' where it is evidently her devotion to Lycius and her desire for companionship that drive her to deceive and force Hermes to transform her into a woman. The tragedy at the end of the poem is thus not merely that Lycius is dead, but that 'Philosophy will clip an angel's wing' and that cold reason destroys their romantic idyll.

Thus although it can be said that an overwhelming sense of shame is at the heart of the tragic experiences in both Richard II and Keats' stories, perhaps it is fairer to say that it just one element contributing to the sadness that audiences feel.

Examiner commentary

This is a full and thorough answer and this length would not necessarily be produced by many top band candidates. It is a perceptive response and throughout the student is assured and sensitive. The candidate aptly uses quotation to support ideas demonstrating secure understanding of the texts themselves.

The writing is assured and there is some sophistication in the argument. The candidate's voice is confident and there is an assured use of critical concepts and terminology. The candidate's expression is mature and there is a clear structure to the argument which is driven through to a convincing conclusion.

There is perceptive understanding of authorial methods with the candidate aware that Richard II is a play and operating in a rather different way to Keats' narrative poems.  There is assured engagement with how meanings are shaped by structure and language.

The candidate is assured in understanding how the dramatic and tragic contexts work here and relevant discussion on the moral and psychological contexts arising from the concept of 'shame' is integrated into the argument. The candidate has a very clear grasp of the generic context.

Clear and relevant connections across other literary texts are made through the candidate's writing about the tragic aspect of 'shame'.  There are also valid connections made between Richard II and Keats' poetry. Although it is not necessary for students to interweave the two texts in the way this candidate has, this is clearly an effective approach for this candidate.

There is perceptive debate here. The candidate confidently engages with the question itself, which is clearly at the forefront of every point that is being made.

Overall, a band 5 mark would seem to be appropriate for this candidate.

This resource is part of the Aspects of tragedy resource package .

Document URL https://www.aqa.org.uk/resources/english/as-and-a-level/english-literature-b/teach/tragedy-c-exemplar-student-response-commentary-band-5

Last updated 16 Dec 2022

Americans used to unite over tragic events − and now are divided by them

Professor of Sociology, University of California, Davis

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Tragedy seldom unifies Americans today.

Every year, horrific crises induce tremendous suffering. Most are privately tragic, affecting only those directly harmed and their immediate relations.

A small number, though, become politically notorious and, therefore, publicly tragic.

Natural disasters , school shootings , terrorist attacks and economic crises can become public tragedies. Sexual assaults – primarily of women – by abusive executives and other men in positions of power recently emerged as a public tragedy , as has police brutality against African Americans , which has sown political unrest across the United States.

Even the COVID-19 pandemic, a seemingly natural disaster, quickly transitioned into a public tragedy as deaths mounted and a pervasive sense of mismanagement, distrust and blame galvanized the public on the political left and right.

Events like these represent a change in how tragic circumstances are cast and how they are responded to in the United States and beyond. Public tragedies are heartrending events that gain widespread public attention. They involve stylized public expressions of shock, outrage, social blame, claims of victimization, protest and memorialization.

My book, “ After Tragedy Strikes ,” explores the recent proliferation of public tragedies as a distinctive kind of political crisis that has produced far-reaching positive and negative effects on social and political relations in the 21st century.

As a sociologist who studies risk, politics and social movements , I didn’t set out to evaluate the authenticity of claims made in public tragedies. Rather, through comparison, my goal was to understand better why some of these events exert tremendous influence, while other, objectively similar, traumas do not.

Public tragedies have contributed to the increasing political polarization and the sectarian tone of political rhetoric today. One question I sought to answer in my book is why?

Old way: ‘God, fate, bad luck’

The short answer is that the public’s understanding of tragic events has changed.

Well into the 20th century, tragedies were mostly explained differently than now. Explanations often referenced forces such as God, fate, bad luck, blameless accidents or, in line with the U.S. liberal political tradition, individual responsibility. Even when suffering was extreme and known to have been caused or worsened by the actions or omissions of other persons, explanations of what caused it typically took these forms.

Take Pennsylvania’s Johnstown Flood of 1889 , in which more than 2,200 people and much of the city were swept away by a deluge after a dam failed. The wealthy South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club had built the dam to create a private lake. Despite the failure due to poor construction and maintenance, neither the club nor its wealthy members would be held responsible . In the most prominent legal case brought against the club, the final verdict attributed the tragic deaths and destruction to an act of God.

Today, this explanation would be indefensible.

New way: ‘government, industry, culture’

After a tragedy, accounts now focus on assigning blame. I found that they also typically center on social blame, in which societal institutions such as the government, industry, civil society and even American culture are held responsible.

Social blame attributes harm to social forces, not individuals or God. And because some group or aspect of society is blamed, public tragedies involve political conflict.

Another reason public tragedies have become so politically consequential lies in a change in the contemporary American mindset.

Polls show that many Americans are experiencing fear and a deep sense of vulnerability to circumstances that feel beyond their control.

This mindset inspires sympathy for victims of tragic circumstance, especially when the harms they suffer are portrayed by political elites, the media and social activists as reflecting political failure and an unfair society. Political interests on both the left and right now routinely use claims of victimization to gain support and advantage.

George Floyd’s murder: A public tragedy

Take the story of George Floyd, killed in 2020 by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Floyd’s murder provoked nationwide outrage as video footage of it circulated first on social media and then through sustained news media coverage. The news and social media story of Floyd’s death emphasized his innocence: As a Black man, he had suffered an unjustified death at the hands of the police.

This representation was unusual at the time. Standard coverage of such killings often focused on resistance to arrest, prior indiscretions or the victim’s criminal record, which implies individual responsibility. Stories regarding Floyd’s death did not emphasize these elements.

Nor did the stories suggest Floyd’s death was a necessary part of police fighting crime – another common feature of news accounts. Nor did stories emphasize that Chauvin was a rogue cop, which would have suggested his killing of Floyd was his responsibility alone.

Rather, the initial stories connected Floyd’s killing to police violence across the country, suggesting it was a common police behavior.

Thus, Floyd’s murder was quickly blamed on “policing ,” gaining enormous public sympathy and notoriety – and, with this, political significance. It became a public tragedy, highlighting a set of societal conditions surrounding Floyd’s death in a way that few police killings of Black men had achieved.

‘Good people brought low’

In the past, Americans might have attributed Floyd’s killing to fate, bad luck, accident or his individual responsibility, which might have weakened public outrage.

Yet explanations of this kind are not as believable as they once were. Instead, the heartrending stories characteristic of public tragedies follow a routine storyline I call the “trauma script.” It is a stylized rendering that taps into American fears and vulnerabilities and prompts emotional response and moral panic.

The script centers on innocent victims harmed by unforeseeable, uncontrollable and unwarranted circumstances blamed on the actions or omissions of “society.”

In this telling, public tragedies convey a moral struggle in which good people are brought low by a bad society. This tragic struggle is not internal and personal but external and socially focused. It’s a scenario in which bad things happen to good people who have no choice.

The public perception of trauma and loss and its underlying causes has, therefore, changed over time.

In an earlier era, Americans often justified hardship because it reflected the sacrifice necessary to get ahead. Now, a shift in sentiment reflects a change in view. Americans now focus on unjustified hardship caused by society. This reflects a cultural shift from a progress-centered worldview toward a risk-focused one.

Victimhood as a political identity

As Americans have become more aware of risks, they increasingly view them as reflecting political choices.

Whether the issue is climate change, energy sources, guns, sexual harassment, discrimination, policing, abortion or even free speech, these are now understood as involving decisions regarding risks that will benefit some and victimize others.

Politically, these have become zero-sum disputes, leading to political polarization among Americans and social distrust of American institutions.

Recent Pew surveys show that two-thirds of Americans believe other Americans have little or no confidence in the government or other citizens. Gallup, too, has shown that American confidence in the government and other major societal institutions has fallen to historic lows .

Growing American distrust of their fellow citizens and perception of an unfair government have also intensified political competition. Americans increasingly blame their political rivals for their hardships and show compassion only toward those who share their beliefs. This shift has also cultivated sympathy for claims of societal victimization and elevated victimhood as a political identity.

These conditions are the context within which public tragedies, as polarizing not unifying political events, have proliferated.

• School shootings
• Political crisis
• George Floyd
• 9/11 (September 11)

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Where did people get the idea that your essay needs to be about your own tragic circumstances?

Looking at the common app prompts, almost all of them are about intellectual curiosities, identity, and beliefs. Only one of the prompts really asks for an obstacle. A lot of applicants I see are often like “I haven’t had a tragic life, so I don’t have any good essay topics.” Where did people get this idea, and how true is it?

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Published: Friday 25th of January 2013

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The Invention of “the Male Gaze”

I was probably in college when I first learned that movies could commandeer my desires in a manner hostile to my flourishing as a woman. My favorite film at the time was “ Sin City ,” a 2005 neo-noir adapted from Frank Miller’s graphic-novel series of the same name. The men were smoking hot, fuelling my nascent infatuation with Clive Owen and Bruce Willis and even, maybe, in some corner of my psyche, the comeback bruiser Mickey Rourke. But, as in many a noir, the women provided much of the spectacle. There was Alexis Bledel playing to type as a blue-eyed Bambi named Becky; Carla Gugino as a parole officer with a high ass in a gauzy robe; Brittany Murphy, a pouty waitress draped in a lover’s starched white shirt; Devon Aoki, a gorgeously mum assassin; Rosario Dawson, lethally beautiful sheathed in leather; Jessica Alba gyrating in chaps. Their characters were assembled from new and old Hollywood types—dizzy dames, femmes fatales, “strong female leads”—neither capitulating to those codes, exactly, nor revolting against them. A winking, pulpy pastiche by design, “Sin City” (directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez) replicated with gusto a cinematic genre that made a tradition out of sublimating its anxieties about womankind via sultry, duplicitous characters. In one shot, the male narrator broods in the background while a fish-netted rear end belonging to no character in particular fills the foreground. What is that ass doing there? Where does it exist within the space of the story? And if it’s there to court our appreciation, who does it think we are?

Men, possibly. Often, these days, we confront such questions by invoking the concept of “the male gaze.” The term was popularized, fifty years ago, by the British film theorist Laura Mulvey, who wrote, in a 1973 essay called “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” of how the “male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.” Mulvey sought to break down the mechanics of looking to expose how cinematic conventions reinforce patriarchal fantasy, a task that she believed “called out for the vocabulary and the concepts of psychoanalysis.” At the time, the work of the mid-century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan was de rigueur in cinema studies. His concept of the gaze posited that the act of looking was fundamental to the development of one’s identity. An infant, during what Lacan calls the “mirror stage,” achieves self-mastery by communing with his or her own reflection; in the cinema, the theory went, something similar happened as spectators formed a sense of identification with the figures that they watched onscreen. Before Lacan, Sigmund Freud had argued in his essays on infantile sexuality that looking conferred a voyeuristic pleasure, Schaulust (or, in its Greek approximation, “scopophilia”). These two ways of looking seemed in some senses at odds: in the former case, the subject understands herself via the image reflected back at her; in the latter, she takes pleasure objectifying whatever, or whomever, she sees.

Yet Mulvey argued that cinema, in fact, reconciles this tension, by consolidating both kinds of looking within the consuming of a particular kind of fantasy image. In a darkened theatre, our compulsory gaze is in reflexive sympathy with the camera’s interests and our pleasure stirred by the human forms onscreen, some of whom seem posed for our perusal. Those figures, Mulvey noticed, are often female; like that ass in “Sin City,” they are there not to participate in the narrative so much as to adorn it. This cinematic world does not operate in a void, of course. It is, Mulvey writes, “subject to the law which produces it”—that is, the rules of the surrounding society shape what we watch. So it is no coincidence that cinematic images tend to replicate gender as patriarchy sees it, reinforcing a classic division between passive femininity and active masculinity—the “to-be-looked-at-ness eroticism” of, say, Marlene Dietrich’s famous legs in the 1930 film “Morocco” versus the heroic wanderlust of her co-star, Gary Cooper. As John Berger wrote in his own analysis of the masculine gaze in visual art, from the 1972 book “ Ways of Seeing ” (adapted from the BBC series of the same name), “One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear .” Sometimes, Mulvey later wrote, “the female spectator may feel so out of key with the pleasure on offer, with its ‘masculinisation’, that the spell of fascination is broken.” But often enough, as for me with “Sin City,” the spell holds.

Though Mulvey’s essay analyzed the work of specific directors— Alfred Hitchcock ’s masterfully subjective camera in “ Vertigo ,” for instance—she was not preoccupied with any one technician or viewer so much as with the technological process by which gender dynamics are asserted onscreen and alchemized through the pleasure of spectators. The way bodies are framed, and the way the camera moves, teaches us to look at women the way that patriarchy already does. Over time, Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze became an obligatory citation for works of feminist film criticism. As the critics Janet Bergstrom and Mary Ann Doane put it, any scholar who came afterward “felt compelled to situate herself in relation.” It also became a favorite shorthand for works of mainstream criticism seeking to critique how gender plays out in film and television. (According to one reviewer, Sam Levinson’s tepidly provocative new HBO series “ The Idol ,” about a pop star who bares all, “screams the male gaze.”) Various films in recent years, such as Steven Soderbergh’s male-stripper trilogy “ Magic Mike ” and Céline Sciamma ’s lesbian period piece “ Portrait of a Lady on Fire ,” have prompted a parallel preoccupation with “the female gaze,” broadly defined as a humane courting of the pleasure of women viewers. But, as other critics have pointed out, when applied too broadly that term can obscure rather than illuminate. The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum wrote in a review of the 2016 Amazon series “I Love Dick,” adapted from Chris Kraus’s experimental feminist novel , that the term “female gaze” had become “blunt” from overuse, “particularly with its essentialist hint that women share one eye: a vision that is circular, mucky, menstrual, intimate, wise.” Contrary to Mulvey’s approach, uses of the “gaze” today—be it the male gaze, the white gaze, the straight gaze, and so forth—seem more invested in matters of identity than in the project of aesthetic analysis. They want to name who is doing the looking rather than how. (No wonder Cate Blanchett , in an interview for the 2015 live adaptation of “Cinderella,” misheard a question about the “Disney villain gaze” as “Disney villian gays.”)

What too often gets elided from current gaze talk is the possibility of looking as an act of ambivalence. As Frantz Fanon wrote in “ Black Skin, White Masks ,” his psychoanalytic study of colonialism, even the oppressor’s gaze can be a site of uncertainty; no one’s viewpoint—or projection—is entirely secure. In a 1989 critique of mainstream film criticism, bell hooks turned her attention to the previously ignored experience of the Black female spectator. Alienated by the exclusionary and racist fantasies of Hollywood cinema, Black women developed their own way of looking, in which a critical awareness of stereotypes preëmpted any straightforward identification with the mammies or tragic mulattas onscreen. One did not acquire this “oppositional gaze,” as hooks called it, by virtue of being Black and female; rather, one cultivated it through the tug and pull of resisting dominant ways of looking. Mulvey, in that sense, like other film theorists of the time, had made too much of the idea that cinematic images could impose a point of view.

In the introduction to a 1989 collection of her essays, “ Visual and Other Pleasures ,” Mulvey wrote that her essay on the male gaze had erupted from the ecstatic feminist thinking of its time. Feminists of the seventies understood the political utility of a polemic. Mulvey, in that spirit, had forfeited a degree of nuance, she noted; any revisitation of her essay should consider it part of the “historical moment” rather than as a concept made to last. But Mulvey’s essay also had a forward-looking bent that gets overlooked when present-day critics invoke the “male gaze” as a cudgel. A lifelong cinephile and a filmmaker herself, Mulvey saw in the emerging independent filmmaking of the sixties and seventies an opportunity for cinema to detach itself from the patriarchal conventions and monied priorities of Hollywood. Invoking directors of the avant-garde including Hollis Frampton and Chantal Akerman , Mulvey called for the “birth of a cinema which is radical in both a political and aesthetic sense.”

What remains invigorating about Mulvey’s essay, above all, is its interest in the capacity of psychoanalysis to teach us new ways of looking. Film theorists who return to Lacan have pointed out that even he did not treat the gaze as a site of clear-cut self-knowledge. The film professor Todd McGowan, in a 2003 article called “Looking for the Gaze,” revisited Lacan’s reading of the Hans Holbein the Younger painting “The Ambassadors,” in “ The Seminar Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis .” The large-scale work shows two men, one richly garbed and another in religious dress, leaned against a table stuffed with objects. A memento mori in the lower third of the canvas looks different from different points of view—from head on it appears as a mere smudge, but from the high-right or lower left the shape becomes a skull—courting an active exchange between viewer and art object. When we look, Lacan wrote, “something slips, passes, is transmitted, from stage to stage, and is always to some degree eluded in it.”

In a book published this spring, “ A Black Gaze ,” Tina M. Campt, a Black feminist theorist of visual culture at Princeton, picks up that strain in Lacan’s thinking. The gaze as she presents it is not another decisive site of power; it is not a diagnosis or a settled definition. (“My choice of the indefinite article is intentional,” she writes, of the book’s title.) She is interested, rather, in how different art works—she cites, for instance, Arthur Jafa’s quotidian video assemblages or Deana Lawson’s boldly intimate photographic portraits of Black life —set new terms for an active and varied engagement between the viewer and the visual. Like Mulvey’s essay, Campt’s book is forward-looking, exhorting us to “think beyond our comfort zone,” toward something new and speculative.

There is a sketch from Terence Nance’s kaleidoscopic HBO comedy series, “ Random Acts of Flyness ,” that enlivens possibility. It opens with Jon Hamm slouched on the couch in front of a TV set; in voice-over, we hear him ask, “Do you suffer from white thoughts?” We are watching an infomercial for a topical sludge called White Be Gone that promises to eliminate racial prejudice from the psyche, with Hamm as both spokesperson and patient. On the TV set, footage of political protests is playing. He mutters, “Violence isn’t the answer” and thinks, “All lives matter?” before another besuited Hamm poofs into view behind him and rubs White Be Gone on his temples. But soon the perspective shifts: we are watching not the final version of the infomercial but its filming. Hamm takes a beat to sidebar with the Black director, insisting that he is “not white white,” like the target audience of the product. The infomercial resumes—“ ‘I’m not racist’ spoken out loud is a classic white thought,” Hamm explains to the camera—but a minute later the perspective shifts again: we are in Nance’s workspace, where what we’ve just seen is revealed to be a rough cut of a sketch perhaps intended for the very program we are watching. As Nance edits the piece on his computer, he receives a text message from a friend who has viewed the sketch and has some feedback: “it seems to me that as ARTISTS we should be addressing whiteness less… and affirming Blackness more.” The scene ends with Nance texting back, “You right…”

A frictionless interpretation of the sketch would home in on its critique of whiteness. We’re meant to be amused by the ailing soul who professes, as Hamm does, “I’m not racist!” But is this a parody of whiteness or a parody of the critique? Should the viewer sympathize with Nance’s preliminary sketch or his friend’s final feedback? Each scene upends viewers’ positions and redoubles our sense of doubt. Rather than making us feel known, the sketch makes us feel ashamed of our self-assurance. It is not an unpleasurable experience. As we can glean from Lacan, sometimes it is useful to feel the gaze turned back at you. ♦

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The tragic, toxic 'love' at the heart of 'Chimp Crazy'

The popular new HBO Max docuseries “Chimp Crazy” airs its season finale Sunday night. From the creator of Netflix’s “Tiger King,” this four-part project has over the past month slowly revealed to viewers a grim reality: In private homes across the United States, chimpanzees, monkeys and other primates are being kept as pets, forced to wear diapers and children’s clothing. Treated as human babies, they’re prevented from expressing their natural, wild behaviors. As the series highlights, it’s a serious problem that has been hiding in plain sight.

“Chimp Crazy” focuses on chimpanzees but other species such as macaques, capuchins, lemurs and marmosets also suffer and languish in people’s bedrooms, dens, basements and garages. Prior to these unsuitable homes, these animals are typically kept in largely barren cages at exotic animal dealers. Breeding operations pull newborn animals from their mothers to sell in the pet trade. They are dressed up, leashed and trundled out for shopping trips and family gatherings. 

“Chimp Crazy” focuses on chimpanzees but other species such as macaques, capuchins, lemurs and marmosets also suffer and languish in people’s bedrooms, dens, basements and garages.

The owners profiled in the series tell us with sincerity that they love their animals. But what does that “love” do to the creatures in question? Chimps are among our closest biological cousins but they are not like us nor are they suited to be our pets. These are wild animals being kept far from the natural environments and ecosystems that support their fundamental psychological and physical needs. In treating them as human babies, we demean and distort who they are.

Importantly, animals born and raised in situations like the ones portrayed in “Chimp Crazy” cannot be returned to the wild because primates sold in the pet trade are typically hand-raised and deprived of learned survival skills. If released, they could also endanger wild populations by spreading diseases acquired in captivity. 

There are some suitable places for them, like the Humane Society of the United States’ Black Beauty Ranch , where some of the almost 600 sanctuary residents are wild animals once kept as pets. Such accredited sanctuaries provide proper enrichment, expansive habitats and critical social contact — but they shouldn’t have to exist. Many animals at Black Beauty still bear the scars of their earlier traumas. Among the primates once kept as pets, we see anxious behaviors consistent with animals deprived of essential coping and resilience skills they should have learned from their mothers. Jackie, a nervous Capuchin, grasps and holds her abdomen when she is stressed or overexcited. Cali, a marmoset, has bouts of unpredictable aggression.

The human “love” they were subjected to haunts them still.

“Tiger King” brought the roadside zoo industry into wider view, showing how hucksters use animals as business commodities with little to no regard for their health and well-being. Prior to the show, most Americans were likely unaware of what goes on at these deplorable operations. Some may have even visited them, intrigued by the idea of “cuddling” with a tiger cub. And despite its more salacious lens, “Tiger King” ultimately did more than just entertain people stuck at home during the pandemic; in the end, it created momentum for reform efforts and sparked a renewed push to end captive wildlife entertainment.

Like “Tiger King” before it, “Chimp Crazy” gives us an opportunity to reflect. We may empathize with those who think loving nonhuman primates justifies keeping them as pets. But we should not follow their example. When the form of “love” causes harm to animals every day of their lives, society should not turn a blind eye.

In addition to the cruelty of forcing animals to live in ways that compromise their nature, there is also a serious public safety risk. “Chimp Crazy” focuses on chimpanzees, but other primate species flood the exotic pet trade, including baboons, capuchins, lemurs, macaques and marmosets. Wild animals, including primates, can transmit bacterial, viral, parasitic and fungal infections to humans. Close contact can lead to serious injury. According to data compiled by the Humane Society of the United States from news reports, more than 300 dangerous incidents (primarily attacks and escapes) involving pet primates have occurred since 1990. Those incidents have occurred in 41 states, resulting in injuries to 153 adults and 78 children, and the deaths of more than three dozen primates.

In addition to the  human injuries that have resulted from contact with  chimpanzees alone, incidents involving other nonhuman primates have left people with severed fingers, ears and nostrils, bone-deep bites and severe lacerations.

One particularly horrible incident  in 2009 inspired federal legislation to prohibit private ownership of nonhuman primates. A woman named Charla Nash had her hands and face mostly destroyed by her friend’s pet chimpanzee, Travis. Nash survived, barely, but the resulting legislation, designed to protect both animals and people, has not yet passed in Congress . Ideally “Chimp Crazy” will do for primates what “Tiger King” did for big cats when it added momentum to the push for the Big Cat Public Safety Act, finally enacted by Congress in 2023. Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who first introduced the Captive Primate Safety Act in 2009, certainly hopes so .

But the fact that a woman’s profound and very public disfigurement has not yet spurred Congress into federal action highlights the challenges of this fight. We know these wild animals live all across America as pets. But due to a patchwork of state laws — some that ban many or all pet primates and others with either ineffective permitting systems or no regulations at all — it is impossible to estimate exactly how many currently live in this country or where they are located. 

And we must not forget these often-hidden animals when the series ends.

Kitty Block is the president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States and the CEO of Humane Society International. Block first joined the HSUS as a legal investigator in 1992. She has advised the White House on trade and the environment, and served multiple elected terms on the International Dolphin Conservation Agreement International Review Panel.

University of Washington Information School

i School's Caliskan wins award to battle bias in artificial intelligence

Imagine losing out on your dream job due to bias in AI tools used in the resume screening process or having your health care compromised for the same reason.

Those are the disturbing scenarios that Aylin Caliskan , an assistant professor in the University of Washington Information School, is dedicated to thwarting.

Caliskan was recently awarded a $603,342 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for her project titled, “The Impact of Associations and Biases in Generative AI on Society.” She is planning to develop computational methods to measure biases in generative artificial intelligence systems and their impact on humans and society. Caliskan says her goal is reducing bias in AI and human-AI collaboration.

“Hopefully, in the long term, we will be able to raise awareness and provide tools to reduce the harmful consequences of bias,” said Caliskan, who became a co-director of the UW Tech Policy Lab earlier this year. Her research in computer science and artificial intelligence will also provide empirical evidence for tech policy.

Caliskan noted that AI is used in a variety of places that many people don’t realize. Companies often use AI to screen job applications; some colleges use it to screen student applications; and health-care providers use AI in reviewing patient data. 

But because AI is trained on data produced by humans, it learns biases similar to those found in society. Women and people of different ethnicities are more frequently discriminated against in AI than white males, Caliskan said. She cited an example from current use of generative AI in health care, where African American patients may receive less effective or lower-cost medications when prescribed through AI than patients of European descent.

Caliskan’s work was among the first to develop methods to detect and quantify bias in AI. One of the difficulties she faces is that AI doesn’t work or “think” exactly like humans, despite being developed by them. However, AI is being used on a large scale and is helping to shape society. 

Another challenge for Caliskan is that not all AI is the same. Many companies have their own proprietary AI systems that they may or may not be willing to allow researchers like Caliskan to study. 

One of the keys to reducing bias in AI is understanding the mechanisms of bias and where the bias originated, she said. Some bias is cultural, societal or historical. Figuring out what is “fair” in a specific context and task isn’t trivial.

“There are many fairness notions,” Caliskan said. “We don’t have simple, straightforward answers to these complex open questions.”

Caliskan notes she grew up a multilingual immigrant, which fostered her interest in the subject of fairness. She speaks German, Turkish and Bulgarian as well as English.

“I was able to observe and live in different cultures in my childhood and observe different societies,” she said. “I have always been fascinated by culture and languages.”

Since coming to the UW, Caliskan has been invited to speak at AI-related events at Stanford University, Howard University, the Santa Fe Institute, and the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence. Her paper rigorously showing that AI reflects cultural stereotypes was published in Science magazine. 

In 2023, Caliskan was listed among the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics by the Women in AI Ethics organization. She previously received an NSF award for her work on privacy and fairness in planning while using third-party sources. Caliskan is teaching a course on generative AI literacy this fall. 

Caliskan’s NSF grant will last for five years, but she doesn’t see her work on the subject ending then. 

“I see this research going on my entire life,” she said. “Since bias cannot be entirely eliminated, this is a lifelong problem.”

However, Caliskan believes that identifying, measuring and reducing bias can help align AI with societal values and raise awareness.

“I don’t think eliminating bias entirely in AI or people is possible,” she said. But “when we know we are biased, we adjust our behavior.”

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Tragic Flaw in Julius Caesar

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Published: Mar 16, 2024

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Julius caesar's ambition and hubris, brutus's idealism and naivety, cassius's envy and manipulation.

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7 big issues at stake in the 2024 election

WASHINGTON — The policy contrasts between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are sharpening as the general election campaign gets fully underway.

But what does the choice represent for ordinary voters and the economic and cultural issues they care about? A rematch between the Democratic incumbent and his Republican predecessor may feel uninspiring to many voters, but the policy stakes are enormous for tens of millions of Americans — and the world.

Here are seven big issues at stake in the 2024 election.

The contrast: Biden favors federal abortion protections; Trump opposes them. Trump supported nationwide restrictions on abortion as president but now downplays the need for a federal ban, as Republicans are divided over the issue. Biden does not support federal limits.

Biden has championed the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill to protect abortion rights in all 50 states under federal law and prohibit medically unnecessary hurdles to accessing the procedure. He has asked voters to send him a Democratic Congress that supports legal abortion to achieve that.

Trump has boasted that he "broke Roe v. Wade" by picking three of the five Supreme Court justices who overturned it, delivering on a four-decade goal of the GOP. More recently, Trump has openly fretted that the backlash may cost him and his party the election. Last week, Trump said the issue should be left to states, a shift from his support for nationwide restrictions when he was president. His new stance has drawn pushback from GOP allies, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina , and anti-abortion-rights advocates, who say that he is wrong and that Republicans should not be deterred from their long-standing goal of enacting some nationwide abortion limits.

Some Republicans downplay the prospects of federal abortion restrictions’ passing Congress, even if they win full control. Biden and his allies are telling voters to look at the GOP’s long history of championing federal restrictions and not their recent rhetoric.

Immigration

The contrast: Trump has promised a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration and tougher executive actions; Biden is asking Congress to give him more tools to manage an overwhelmed border and create new legal pathways to immigrate to the U.S.

Trump has called existing border laws an existential threat to the U.S., saying migrants are “ poisoning the blood of our country” and bringing new “ languages .” His campaign website says: “President Trump will shut down Biden’s border disaster. He will again end catch-and-release, restore Remain in Mexico , and eliminate asylum fraud. In cooperative states, President Trump will deputize the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing illegal alien gang members and criminals.”

After having rescinded some of Trump's policies, Biden has recently shifted to support stricter immigration laws as the system remains overwhelmed. He championed a bipartisan bill to raise the bar for gaining asylum, grant more U.S. resources to process asylum claims and turn away migrants who do not qualify, and empower the president to temporarily shut down the border if migration levels hit certain triggers. (Republicans blocked the bill in the Senate amid lobbying by Trump , who wants to use the border as an election issue.) Biden has also endorsed the U.S. Citizenship Act , which would grant a pathway to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally if they pass background checks and pay their taxes.

Fundamentally, Trump has aligned with forces who want less immigration into the country, while Biden has embraced the belief that immigrants make the U.S. better.

Health care and prescription drugs

The contrast: Biden wants to extend Affordable Care Act provisions and empower Medicare to negotiate more prescription drugs; Trump has aggressively criticized the ACA but not offered a health care plan.

Biden, who was vice president when the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, sees it as a cherished achievement to protect and strengthen. The law, also known as "Obamacare," which has extended coverage to 45 million people through subsidies, insurance mandates and a Medicaid expansion, continues to face conservative opposition.

Separately, Biden has touted a provision in his party-line Inflation Reduction Act that empowers Medicare to negotiate lower prices for 10 prescription drugs. He said he wants to boost that to 50 if he is re-elected, with the goal of $200 billion in savings.

Trump spent his four years as president fighting unsuccessfully to repeal and unravel the law — through legislation and executive action and endorsing lawsuits to wipe it out. In November, Trump called for revisiting plans to "terminate" the ACA . He has recently sought to downplay that and insists he only wants to improve the law. But he has not offered a health care plan. Many of his GOP allies in Congress still favor repealing or undoing the ACA, including a budget by the Republican Study Committee, which boasts about 80% of the House GOP conference as members, including Speaker Mike Johnson, of Louisiana.

The contrast: Trump's 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of next year, and he has called for extending them; Biden has called for raising taxes on families earning over $400,000 to fund various priorities.

A series of Trump tax cuts, which Republicans passed on a party-line basis in 2017, expire at the end of 2025. Congress and the winner of the election will decide what happens to them.

In a recent private speech to wealthy donors, Trump s aid his policies include "extending the Trump tax cuts" if he is elected, according to a Trump campaign official. That would preserve lower rates across the income spectrum, with the biggest benefits for top earners.

Biden has attacked that law as a giveaway to the wealthiest Americans, vowing to make "big corporations and the very wealthy finally pay their fair share." He has backed a corporate tax rate hike from 21% to 28% and said that "nobody earning less than $400,000 will pay an additional penny in federal taxes." Biden is also calling for a $3,600-per-child tax cut for families, an $800 average tax break for "front-line workers" and a 25% minimum tax on billionaires, according to a newly released campaign plank.

The expiration of the Trump tax cuts will restore the unlimited federal deduction for state and local taxes, which Republicans had capped at $10,000 in the 2017 law. Republicans broadly support preserving the cap, with some exceptions, while most Democrats want to lift it.

Judges and the Supreme Court

The contrast: Their track records tell a clear story. Trump has picked young conservative judges to serve on the federal bench, while Biden has picked liberals with a focus on professional and personal diversity.

One of the clearest contrasts is what kinds of judges Trump and Biden would pick for lifetime appointments on the federal courts. A simple way for voters to think about it is whether they prefer new judges with the conservative views of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump's first Supreme Court pick, or with the liberal views of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden's (so far only) high court pick.

As president, Trump nominated young conservative judges who will serve for generations. Biden has focused on finding judges with diverse backgrounds and résumés, including more civil rights lawyers and public defenders.

Perhaps the biggest question is whether a Supreme Court vacancy will open up in the next four years. The presidential election winner and the party that controls the Senate would fill it.

The contrast: Trump is pushing a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports; Biden's White House opposes that, saying it would raise inflation.

Trump, long a skeptic of U.S. trade deals, has proposed to impose a 10% tariff on all imported goods if he returns to the White House. He recently told Fox News that it could be 60% — or potentially “more than that” — on imports of Chinese goods.

Biden opposes that idea. In a memo over the weekend, the White House slammed the idea of "across-the-board tariffs that would raise taxes and prices by $1,500 per American family," without naming Trump; it referred to an estimate by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, that Trump's 10% tax on imports could cost an average American household $1,500 per year.

Biden, instead, has sought to boost domestic manufacturing with major federal investments in semiconductors and electric vehicles.

Foreign policy and NATO

The contrast: Biden favors Ukraine aid, while Trump is skeptical of it; Biden supports NATO and a traditional view of American power, while Trump has criticized NATO and voiced some isolationist views.

The clearest example of the foreign policy differences between the two concerns the fate of Ukraine, which is running low on ammunition and says it needs U.S. assistance to continue holding off Russia’s aggression. Biden is an ardent proponent of helping Ukraine, while Trump has poured cold water on U.S. aid to Ukraine and successfully pressured House Republicans to block it since they took the majority in January 2023.

And that points to a deeper divide: Biden is an outspoken supporter of the NATO alliance as a bulwark against adversaries like Russia and China and of preserving the post-World War II order. Trump has dialed up his criticisms of NATO and aligned with a growing isolationist wing in the U.S. that wants to be less involved in global affairs. Trump recently said that as president, he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to member countries who are “delinquent” in their dues.

Sahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.