Manon des Sources

I think one of the things that makes tragedy particularly effective on the audience is its predictability. We can see things that the characters cannot because we are standing outside the situation looking in instead of standing within the situation and looking out. We see each character’s flaws clearly in contrast with the events of the story so that we can predict the story’s ending in ways that the characters cannot.

Manon des Sources ends up working particularly well because we saw the b...