Heims is a writer and teacher living in Paris. In this essay, he examines those aspects of The Gin Game that make it a tragedy.

When used in everyday speech, the word tragedy refers to a grave and unexpected misfortune with terrible consequences. When used in relation to drama, tragedy signifies a play that chronicles such a misfortune and its consequences. Tragedies can end in death or in the exclusion of the person whom the tragedy befalls from membership in the common society. But there is a particular characteristic of a tragic dramatic figure that makes her or him different from a character in a play who merely suffers misfortune or even death. While it is tragic when a character in real life is, for example, attacked and killed on the street or maimed in an automobile accident or blown up in war or the victim of...