I went to see Madame Butterfly, the opera classic. It was only my second time seeing opera, the last time being a decade ago, but I'm already learning to appreciate it. Opera is the perfect form for a tragedy such as Madame Butterfly because it manages to be so grand and so simple at the same time.
The simplicity is perhaps why I was able to realize what a tragedy truly is.
So in the story, an American soldier stationed in Japan weds a young Japanese girl named Butterfly. Soon after, he returns to America, and in the three ensuing years she waits and loves and hopes... until he finally returns, but with an American wife. They'd gotten wind that she had birthed a son by him, so it was their intention to give that son a better life in America. She consents, and then kills herself.
The tragedy is that there is no good and bad in this story. As is in real life, it depends on your perspective; people are just doing the best they can by what they know how. Butterfly in her idealism (and naïveté, it can be argued) could do nothing but give completely of herself. And once she had, could do nothing but hold on. Soldier Pinkerton had never expected to stay in Japan and could never break Butterfly's heart by telling her directly. Although cowardly, he reasonably assumed that she would just move on, as people do. He is overwhelmed with guilt when he returns and discovers she hasn't... and is just the slightest bit too late to stop her from killing herself.
The tragedy is that these two characters were just living out who they were and by doing so, advanced inevitably into an ill-fated end. We the audience imagine that had the circumstances been different, even slightly, that things would have turned out differently. That alternate "what could have been" is what kills us. But arguably the two character types wouldn't have made it under any circumstance.
In the program synopsis it was printed that Butterfly is the only one that experiences character development. She would have never given up hoping, and never killed herself, if the realization didn't dawn on her that she was never wanted. That realization is what causes her to change course and ultimately end her own life.
Character development, of course, is what separates life from story. Despite the similarly blameless nature of the people involved in both life and story, character development is what prevents life from being a tragedy. That we learn and adjust our behavior according to each other, which then allows us to be happy. Which is not to say that tragedies don't occur anyway, but there is always hope. Unlike Madame Butterfly, there is always hope.