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Unit 1: Literary Terms: Classical and Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy and Tragic Hero

13. In an ideal tragedy, the protagonist will mistakenly bring about his own downfall. Notes
14. The term hamartia is more closer to flaw than to mistake.
15. Aristotle gave more emphasis on the inner structure of the play rather than spectacle
to arouse pity and fear.

1.2 Classical and Aristotle’s Concept of Tragic Hero

A tragic hero is the main character (or “protagonist”) in a tragedy. Tragic heroes appear in the
dramatic works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster,
Marston, Corneille, Racine, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Strindberg, and many other writers.
The tragic hero is “a great man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the
change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake.”
Aristotle indicates the kind of hero who should serve as the main character, but first, he tells us the
kind of hero who does not qualify for service as a “main character,” or “tragic hero.” He tells us
that, for tragedy, we can’t have:
• A good man falling from happiness to misfortune (this will only inspire revulsion, not pity or
fear)
• An evil man rising from ill fortune to prosperity (that won’t inspire sympathy, so it can’t
arouse pity or fear)
• A wicked man falling from prosperity into misfortune (that might inspire sympathy, but not
pity or fear, because (1) pity can’t be felt for a person whose misfortune is deserved, and (2) if
we don’t identify with the character’s wickedness, we won’t be afraid of his fate falling on
us).

The appropriate tragic hero, then, is the character who sits between these extremes. He’s not
“preeminent in virtue and justice,” but on the other hand, he isn’t guilty of “vice or depravity,” just
some “mistake.” He is a person of some importance, from a “highly renowned and prosperous
place,” a king, like Oedipus.

The hero of tragedy is not perfect, however. To witness a completely virtuous person fall from
fortune to disaster would provoke moral outrage at such an injustice. Likewise, the downfall of a
villainous person is seen as appropriate punishment and does not arouse pity or fear. The best type
of tragic hero, according to Aristotle, exists “between these extremes . . . a person who is neither
perfect in virtue and justice, nor one who falls into misfortune through vice and depravity, but
rather, one who succumbs through some miscalculation”.
Aristotle explains that with regard to the tragic hero there are four things, viz. goodness,
appropriateness, lifelike, and consistency to aim at. These are mentioned below:

Goodness
They should reveal through speech and action what their moral choices are, and a “good character
will be one whose choices are good.” Any “class of person” may be portrayed as “good”—even
women and slaves, though on the whole women are “inferior” and slaves are “utterly base.”

Appropriateness

Men can be domineering or “manly” but for a woman to appear formidable would be inappropriate.
Oedipus shows the appropriate stateliness and intelligence you would expect from the ruler of a
great city.

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