But who is set up for the impossible that is going to happen? Who is set up for tragedy and the incomprehensibility of suffering? Nobody. The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy—that is every man’s tragedy.

Roth’s lines insist on a universal human unpreparedness: no amount of planning, moral rectitude, or worldly competence can truly “set up” a person for catastrophe, grief, or the sheer irrationality of pain. The repetition of “set up” underscores the modern fantasy that life can be engineered against shock. By calling this condition “every man’s tragedy,” the speaker reframes tragedy not as an exceptional fate reserved for a few, but as the baseline vulnerability of being human—our ordinary lives are always lived under the shadow of what cannot be anticipated or made intelligible. The passage also gestures toward Roth’s recurring preoccupation with contingency: the way identity, family, and meaning are destabilized by sudden, senseless events.