Tragic hero: Encyclopedia II - Tragic hero - Classical tragic hero

Tragic hero - Classical tragic hero

The mythical figure known as Herakles to the Greeks and Hercules to the Romans is an example of a hero possessed of enormous strength and a divine lineage, but possessed with the fatal flaw of uncontrollable anger. In a fit of rage, he kills his wife and children, he becomes the servant of King Eurysthenis and then must undertake twelve labors (extremely difficult feats) in a decade long quest to redeem himself. His struggles made Hercules the embodiment of an idea the Greeks called pathos, the experience of virtuous struggle and suffering which would lead to fame and, in Hercules' case, immortality.

The works of Antigone and Oedipus Rex are examples of the flaw of hubris, or pride. Many plays have followed Aristotle's idea of the tragic hero, but William Shakespeare was considered the playwright who helped extend the idea of the tragic hero beyond a flaw of making an error in judgment (as in Oedipus trying to escape his fate only to fulfill it) to the internal conflict of moral argument.

While Shakespeare's King Lear and Brutus (of Julius Caesar) are heroes who can be easily applied with the Aristotlean definition, his Hamlet and Macbeth are the two prime tragic heroes where Aristotle's meaning ends and Shakespeare's begins. Hamlet's fatal flaw, as seen by Aristotle, would be his failure to act immediately to kill Claudius. Unlike Oedipus, however, Hamlet is well aware of his fatal flaw from the outset. He constantly questions himself on why he continues to delay the fulfillment of his duty. In doing so, his continuous awareness and doubt (e.g. using the play-within-the-play to make sure the Ghost was telling the truth) incapacitates him from acting. Hamlet finally acts to kill Claudius only after realizing that he is poisoned. But by procrastinating, everyone whom he ridicules and targets also dies along the way, such as Laertes, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.

Macbeth, however, presents a problem; whereas in Hamlet, we are made to feel some degree of empathy or sorrow for the hero because of the loss of his father and his mother's marriage to his uncle, Macbeth as the hero arouses little pity or feeling. His tragic flaw is that of being power-hungry, conniving, and utterly amoral when the opportunity suits him (note how in Act III, Scene I the third murderer is not present at Macbeth's briefing and yet in Act III, Scene III he is more informed than the other two murderers on what they are about to do). Macbeth does not possess two of the qualifying factors for a "traditional" tragic hero. He lacks goodness; he is also not superior, having been referred to by other thanes as a tyrant and an incompetent ruler during his kingship. At the beginning of the play however Macbeth is viewed as great, when he is being described as superior in battle by the Sergeant and when described by Duncan. Macbeth may be an early example of an Anti-hero.

A modern example of the classical tragic hero would be Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars. A gifted youth like Hercules, his fatal flaw is anger, and he destroys everything he loves as a result of his fear and rage. As a result of his transgressions he is horribly disfigured, and becomes Darth Vader the servant of the malevolent Emperor Palpatine, and is only redeemed after he sacrifices his life to save his son.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Classical tragic hero", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki