The Green Years by A.J. Cronin

The essence of Aristotle's definition of a comedy is as follows: a comedy is a story of the rise in fortune of a sympathetic character.

Before reading King Lear,  we were asked if we believed that a tragedy is the best way to convey meaning. I stand by my answer then that the story of a tragedy does stay with people and haunt them for longer. I do, however, also believe that comedy is a meaningful art form.

I believe that tragedy conveys meaning better than comedy because people seem to take more away from a bad experience than from a good experience. Many times, a comedic story is just taken as a fun light read that just reaffirms people's belief that everything will end up well and everybody will get a happy ending. A tragedy makes readers rethink their previously held beliefs and look again at what they thought was right and wrong, and their way of life. But the only lessons to be learned aren't that everything is doomed, and people are evil. There are also stories about struggle that don't always end in death and failure, but success, and reading these stories are just as necessary as reading tragedies.

The novel The Green Years by A.J. Cronin is one of these novels. It is a superb book--and the fact that the author shares my last name makes it even better. It is a story about an boy who is orphaned when his parents die from consumption. He is originally from Dublin, Ireland, and when he moves to Scotland he is met with many hardships. As well as being very poor, he is one of the very few Catholics in a predominantly Protestant town, and is met with some very strong negativity because of this. I don't want to give away the whole story, but because I have classified it as a comedy, it obviously ends well.

I loved this story and believe that it teaches some greats lessons and gets across very valuable meaning. I highly recommend it to everyone!