The structural pattern of the text as it moves through complication to…

The idea

Tragedy has a shape. AQA expects you to trace how a text moves from an initial condition, often order or prosperity, through complication, climax and catastrophe, to a resolution that may restore a fragile order. In Othello, Venice's order gives way to Cyprus's disorder, the temptation scene builds complication, the murder is catastrophe, and Lodovico's report provides resolution. In Death of a Salesman, Willy's remembered prosperity contrasts with present failure. Map turning points, note where the hero's fortune reverses, and explain how each stage causes the next. Structure is not background: it creates the audience's pity and fear.

What earns the marks

• Identifies the initial state of order, prosperity or happiness and explains what stability the hero enjoys or believes he enjoys.
• Traces complication: the arrival of the antagonist, temptation, error or internal flaw that disturbs equilibrium and begins the descent.
• Locates climax and catastrophe precisely, explaining how the crisis point produces the final disaster rather than merely preceding it.
• Analyses resolution: what is restored, what is lost, and how survivors or society reimpose order, often imperfectly.
• Uses structural vocabulary such as exposition, rising action, peripeteia, climax, catastrophe and denouement accurately and sparingly.
• Shows how the pattern embodies the play's ideas about fate, character, society and responsibility.

Common mistakes and how to put them right

• Retelling the plot in chronological order without analysing why each stage causes the next.

  Put it right by explaining causal links and turning points.

• Treating the catastrophe as simply the final death or ending.

  Put it right by distinguishing climax, catastrophe and resolution.

• Assuming order is fully restored at the end.

  Put it right by assessing how far the resolution is partial, uneasy or ambiguous.

• Ignoring the hero's initial prosperity or happiness.

  Put it right by establishing the starting point so the fall can be measured.

Exam tips

• Sketch a simple five-point structure line before writing and keep each paragraph anchored to a stage.
• Use precise terms such as peripeteia and catastrophe only where they genuinely fit, and define them briefly in context.
• Quote from opening and closing scenes to demonstrate the distance travelled from order to disorder.
• Link structure to meaning: ask what the pattern suggests about fate, character or society.