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This suggests that it is an intellectual understanding of her friend's beatings and not a true emotional empathy that she is after. Though the scene is most definitely tragic, if it is approached with the same intellectual curiosity that the two adolescents bring to it can only be seen as an episode of horribly dark humor. The fact that Wendla can be so foolish as to desire an intellectual understanding of child abuse shows her complete lack of a true appreciation for the situation, and is thus a comic -- not necessarily humorous, but comical nonetheless -- situation.
The end of a play is also one way to determine if a particular work is a comedy or a tragedy. The fact that Moritz and Wendla are both unnecessarily dead at the end of the play at first seems to suggest a tragedy, as does Melchior's expulsion. When the characters end up worse than they were at the start of the action, it usually indicates a tragedy. But this is not actually where Spring Awakening leaves off. Instead, Melchior returns to his village -- or at least its graveyard -- and encounters Moritz and the masked Man. This scene is not only highly intellectual,...
Melchior has grown and become better for the incidents in the play, and this outcome suggest a more typical comedy than a tragedy.
Of course, viewing the ending from Moritz's perspective yields a different result, and indeed it would be possible to make an equally convincing argument that Spring Awakening is an inescapable tragedy. But this is the nature of classification in the arts; like the characters I the play, it is uncertain, and one can only do one's best with the material at hand. Viewing this play as a comedy allows one to see Wedekind's understanding of several social issues, and the characters' reactions to these issues are an ironic -- and therefore funny, to a thinking mind -- comment on the situations. This is why Spring Awakening is more comedy than tragedy.
Work Cited
Wedekind, Frank. Spring Awakening, Edward Bond, trans. London: Methuen Drama, 1980.
Work Cited
Wedekind, Frank. Spring Awakening, Edward Bond, trans. London: Methuen Drama, 1980.
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