What does this mean? How does it apply to the play glass menagerie?

Question

“For tragedy is an imitation, not for men {women}, but of an action of life and life consists in action and its end is a mode of action, not a quality”

Answer 1

That is a fairly obscure sounding quotation. It sounds liks a bad translation of Aristotle taken out of context. The point of it, I would say, is that tragedy in a play doesn't occur mainly because of the characters or the creation of some emotional qualities, but of the actions that occur. The idea of imitation is the plays are imitating things that remind us of real life. It isn't real, but the actions that occur could be. The tragedy of Glass Menagerie is about what happens to the characters in the story. The action of the play (hope and rejection) show us life and make us feel the tragedy of what happens to the characters. Your analysis of the quotation and its application to the play should deal with how the plot itself creates the tragedy. Yes, the characters contribute--we feel pity for Laura because of who she is--but the tragedy is the action. And that the action creates a real life, a reality to the story of these people. Tragedy is the result of actions, not just characters or feelings.

Hope that sheds some light on things.

Answer 2

OK. Look again at the statement and the play;
If "life consists in action", can a nice collection of things (glass figures) give someone a meaningful life?
If "life consists in action"; do the women in this play really live?
If someone just "imitate an action of life" that would be a tragedy, right? because it means that they're not really living, just existing/ imitating..

Answer 3

So far as I can tell, it means nothing. If that was assigned to you by a teacher, he or she ought to be ashamed of himself/herself.