Tragedy

  • Medea by Euripides
    420 BCE

    Medea by Euripides

    Theater/Literature
    A mother’s revenge turns love into horror , one of the earliest emotional tragedies.
  • Apology by Plato
    399 BCE

    Apology by Plato

    Philosophy
    Socrates defends truth and reason, accepting death with dignity.
  • The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
    1308

    The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

    Literature
    Exile and loss transformed into a spiritual journey toward redemption.
  • The Pieta by Michelangelo
    1498

    The Pieta by Michelangelo

    Art History
    Mary’s grief immortalized in marble, sorrow made divine.
  • Hamlet by William Shakespeare

    Hamlet by William Shakespeare

    Theater
    The prince’s grief and indecision reveal the tragedy of human thought and action.
  • Ophelia by John Everett Millais

    Ophelia by John Everett Millais

    Art
    A painting of Ophelia drowning in what looks like a wedding dress after her fathers death.Ophelia was in love with Hamlet and hoped to marry him. The wedding dress could symbolize the life she never had and her crushed dreams of becoming a bride.
  • Royal Opera House by Edward Middelton Barry

    Royal Opera House by Edward Middelton Barry

    Architecture
    was destroyed by German bombing during World War II in 1942. The building was left as a preserved ruin, with its skeletal facade and open-air interior serving as a physical reminder of wartime destruction and the sudden loss of a cultural landmark. Its current form uses absence and decay to powerfully symbolize the violence of the conflict and the resilience of Malta.
  • The Suicide of Cleopatra by Jean Andre Rixens

    The Suicide of Cleopatra by Jean Andre Rixens

    Art History
    captures the sadness of Cleopatra's loyal staff and her final, desperate choice to die rather than be captured by the Romans. It highlights the sorrowful end of the Egyptian queen and the end of her entire empire.
  • The Old Gutarist by Pablo Picasso

    The Old Gutarist by Pablo Picasso

    Art
    The Old Guitarist is tragic as it shows Picasso's Blue Period despair, showing a blind, figure clinging to his guitar amidst poverty, representing universal human suffering, isolation, and the struggle for dignity in a bleak world, reflecting Picasso's own poverty and grief after a friend's suicide.
  • The Trench by Otto Dix

    The Trench by Otto Dix

    Art
    A battlefield filled with destruction everywhere showing the tragedy of war, it shows how tragedy is everywhere
  • Gone with the Wind by Victor Fleming

    Gone with the Wind by Victor Fleming

    Film
    it shows how war destroys a way of life and leaves its characters unable to find happiness. This is shown in the scene where Rhett and Scarlett's daughter, Bonnie, dies in a horseriding accident, a loss that permanently destroys their marriage.
  • The Face of War by Salvador Dali

    The Face of War by Salvador Dali

    History
    The decaying mummified face in a barren landscape with its eye sockets and mouth filled with smaller similar faces symbolizes endless suffering
    Inspired by the Spanish Civil War
  • I’ll be Seeing You by Billie Holiday

    I’ll be Seeing You by Billie Holiday

    Music
    Uses her delivery to transform the lyrics of a hopeful reunion song into an expression of permanent loss. The line, "I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places," suggests the loved one is gone forever, existing only as a painful memory in everyday life
  • Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings

    Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings

    Photography
    The human cost of war captured in imagery
  • Massacre in Korea by Pablo Picasso

    Massacre in Korea by Pablo Picasso

    Art
    contrasts the vulnerability of naked, innocent civilians with the dehumanized, robotic soldiers who are about to execute them. The painting uses a stark composition, an expressionistic style with distorted figures, and a bleak landscape emphasize the senseless horror of war and the destruction of innocent life.