Summary of Adam Phillips's Missing Out

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Tragedies are stories about people not getting what they want, but not all stories about people not getting what they want seem tragic. In comedies, people get something of what they want, but in tragedies, people often discover that their wanting doesn't work and they get less and less of what they thought they wanted. #2 The art of life is to make incompatible wants compatible. We make our lives difficult by making up impossible choices. In reality, we can have justice and mercy, be children and have adult relationships. #3 Cawdrey was a priest who suffered the tyranny of Elizabeth’s established Church. He was known for speaking words in the pulpit that tended to the depraving of the Book of Common Prayer, and he refused to conform to the divine service and administration of the Sacraments. #4 The play asks what we should do with tyrants, and what makes them tyrannical. Someone is seemingly omnipotent, and then they are not. Their power is void. It is a paradoxical point that you can cheat the tyrant Death by killing yourself or by identifying the enemy.