Genres of dramatic or literary works are identified in multiple ways, but one of the most common ways distinguishes between tragedy and comedy. In this dichotomy, the Gospel begins with aspects of tragedy but ends with a comedic resolution.

A tragic work is one in which an intractable problem either has no satisfactory ending or the ending is sad or regretful. A conflict is created, the author develops the plot and characters to address the tension, but the characters’ efforts fail to resolve it. The virtuous hero might be defeated or the evil antagonist prevail. We may feel sympathy or sorrow for the outcome, but it is never a happy or satisfactory resolution, even within the contours of the play, poem, or novel. Shakespeare’s King Lear and Macbeth are classic examples of tragic drama. Reaching into antiquity, the play Oedipus Rex and poem The Odyssey are tragic literature. Modern examples include Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman play, and the film, Manchester by the Sea. Either through a central character’s obduracy or the cruelty of fate, the story ends either without a resolution or a resolution that is sorrowful.

Comedy, on the other hand, is the unexpected but not implausible resolution of some conflict or antagonism that developed in the plot or between characters. Like tragedy, comedy involves creation of tension that might seem intractable. Unlike tragedy, however, the comic play, poem, novel, or film reaches a satisfactory conclusion, resolving the tension and reconciling the characters’ conflicting interests. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a popular comic novel, as is Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dickens’ David Copperfield, and Waugh’s Decline and Fall are other popular examples of the comic literary genre, as When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail represent contemporary film comedy.

Neither genre definition above is exhaustive as variations exist within them and other genres could be identified. And, as noted below, comedy might take a tragic trajectory at some point in the story. But these rough definitions and examples enable us to recognize the Gospel as fundamentally comic.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, his admirers were confident that he was ushering in a temporal, political answer to their suffering and oppression. He was the new King of the Jews, who would throw off the shackles of Roman oppression and institute a new political order. This is the first stage in the conflict to come, putting the narrative on a tragic trajectory. Over the course of what we call Holy Week, when it became clear that Jesus’ mission was different from the expectation of much of the crowd, they turned on him. An ersatz conspiracy of cynical Pharisees and political insurrectionists cooperated to bring a charge of treason against Jesus. He was condemned to death, even after Pilate insisted that he found no fault in him. Jesus was beaten, mocked, executed, and buried. It looked like the tragic beginning had a tragic ending.

Of course, we know that the story doesn’t end here.

In her short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor summarizes the turn from tragedy to comedy in the Easter narrative through the voice of “The Misfit.” The Misfit had escaped from prison, to which he had been confined after murdering his father. He and his current accomplices have committed several more murders before their encounter with a grandmother beside

a wrecked car on a back country road. The Misfit’s accomplices march the grandmother’s son, daughter- in-law, and grandchildren into the woods and shoot them dead. After we hear the gunshots, The Misfit and grandmother have a climactic conversation in which The Misfit explains the comic nature of the death and Resurrection of Jesus.

“Jesus thown everything off balance,” The Misfit declares (N.B., “thown” is the intentional dialectic spelling of “thrown” by O’Connor). Jesus’ punishment “was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn’t committed any crime,” The Misfit asserts. But then he unfolds his theology of the Resurrection. “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead … and He shouldn’t have done it. He thown everything off balance.” O’Connor’s point in this dialogue is that Jesus’ death and Resurrection tell us that comedy, not tragedy, is the true and authentic trajectory of the world. The false tragic narrative was upset by Jesus’ Resurrection.

We are created by God for rest and peace in His company. By our sin, however, we created a tragic script, acted out on a sorrowful stage. The death of Jesus was consistent with that tragedy. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, The Misfit explains, “then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness.” If Jesus stayed dead, the end of human life is tragic, indeed.

But He did not, and it is not. If Jesus did rise from the dead, explains The Misfit, “Then it’s nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow him.” And thus does Flannery O’Connor summarize both the difference between tragedy and comedy and the comic nature of Christian faith. In His Resurrection, Jesus turns the former to the latter. And He invites us to “thow away everything and follow him” in the comedic joy of resurrection.

Dr. Kenneth Craycraft, [email protected], holds the James J. Gardner Chair of Moral Theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology. He is the author of Citizens Yet Strangers: Living Authentically Catholic in a Divided America.

This article appeared in the July 2025 edition of The Catholic Telegraph Magazine. For your complimentary subscription, click here.