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British Drama

Notes Lifelike

Aristotle means lifelike “believable” or “true to life” that means the tragic hero should not be godlike,
not like the mythical heroes of legend, but like real human beings. Oedipus is obviously human. He
has human strengths and weaknesses. There’s nothing supernatural about him.

Consistency
Once a character is established as having certain traits, these shouldn’t suddenly change. Oedipus’
character traits, revealed throughout the play, remain consistent. He’s a truth-seeker, a riddle solver;
he’s questing after self-knowledge; he wants to be a savior; he’s also very proud, a little arrogant,
and he has a real temper.

1.2.1 Definition of Tragic Hero

A tragic hero in a literary work can be defined as someone who is endowed with a tragic fatal flaw
that dooms him to make a serious error in judgment. As a result of this error in judgment, the hero
falls from great heights or from high esteem, realizes that he has made an irreversible mistake, then
faces and accepts a tragic death with honor, evincing pity or fear in the audience.
The fatal flaw is an essential element in the tragic hero, being the pivotal condition that causes his
downfall. The concept of the fatal flaw derives from the Greek word “hamartia,” which is a word
used frequently throughout the New Testament and is usually translated there as “sin” or “missing
the mark” (“Hamartia”). The tragic hero is in effect compelled to sin because of his fatal flaw; he
cannot escape it. The great tragedians, such as Sophocles, identify the tragic hero as one who is
destined to fall because he carries the evil seed of a fatal flaw that at some point in the play springs
up into a full-grown flaw that causes him to commit a fatal and irreversible mistake. The audience
watching the tragic hero is touched with pity or fear, watching the downfall of the mighty from
such a relatively small factor as a little flaw.

Example: The characters Troy Maxson of “Fences” and Oedipus of “Oedipus the King” serve
as good examples of characters that can be analyzed, compared, and contrasted to determine whether
they fit the classical concept of tragic hero.

1.2.2 Characteristics of Tragic Hero

Aristotle gave the following characteristics of tragic hero.
• A great man, usually of noble birth: “one of those who stand in great repute and prosperity,
like Oedipus and Thyestes: conspicuous men from families of that kind.” The hero is neither a
villain nor a model of perfection but is basically good and decent.
• Hamartia (mistake)—a.k.a. the tragic flaw that eventually leads to his downfall. The term
hamartia, which Golden translates as “miscalculation,” literally means “missing the mark,”
taken from the practice of archery. This Greek word, which Aristotle uses only once in the
Poetics, has also been translated as “flaw” or as “error.” The great man falls through—though
not entirely because of—some weakness of character, some moral blindness, or error. We should
note that the gods also are in some sense responsible for the hero’s fall.
Much confusion exists over this crucial term. Critics of previous centuries once understood
hamartia to mean that the hero must have a “tragic flaw,” a moral weakness in character which
inevitably leads to disaster. This interpretation comes from a long tradition of dramatic criticism
which seeks to place blame for disaster on someone or something: “Bad things don’t just happen

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