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A story is about main characters trying to overcome a conflict. The ending is happy if the characters succeed. The ending is sad if the characters fail. The ending is mixed if the characters overcome the core conflict, but at great cost.

That all sounds straightforward, but I think it really is a powerful way to think about it. Stories take on all kinds of forms - different genres, different stakes, different expectations for how much and in which ways characters change. But from a literary theory point of view, all but the most experimental stories have a central conflict. That conflict is what drives our hopes for the main characters. If it's overcome, we celebrate, but if it destroys our heroes, we mourn. So while the titular character's death in _The Great Gatsby_ is tragic, the main character's death in Terry Pratchett's _Reaper Man_ is peaceful and optimistic.

For example, the reason Gatsby's death is tragic is because it is a very permanent way for Gatsby's core conflict to be left unresolved. The conflict is that in his circle of rich but profoundly materialistic "friends," Gatsby desperately wanted genuine human connection. But when he took his first steps towards a real relationship with a woman he was interested in, this stirred the pot with his "friends" too much, one of them was overcome and anger, and Gatsby was killed as a direct result of the same shallowness he never could escape.

In contrast, _Reaper Man_ is about Windle Poons, a curmudgeonly, washed-up old wizard who was grumpily waiting to die. But when he died, he very surprised to find his soul hadn't departed - instead, he woke up as a zombie. Windle's journey is about him tying up some loose ends he had grown too tired to address in life and finding the spark he had lost decades ago. By the end of the story, he's overcome his bitterness, made genuine friends, and fought off an alien monster - the first thing of any real significance he had accomplished in a long time. So when the grim reaper finally shows up to escort him into the next life, he leaves with a profound sense of contentedness.