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

to good people, so it must be someone’s fault.” This was the “comforting” response Job’s friends Notes
in the Old Testament story gave him to explain his suffering: “God is punishing you for your
wrongdoing.” For centuries tragedies were held up as moral illustrations of the consequences
of sin.

Given the nature of most tragedies, however, we should not define hamartia as
tragic flaw. While the concept of a moral character flaw may apply to certain tragic figures,
it seems inappropriate for many others.

Example: There is a definite causal connection between Creon’s pride which precipitates
his destruction, but can Antigone’s desire to see her brother decently buried be called a flaw in
her character which leads to her death? Her stubborn insistence on following a moral law higher
than that of the state is the very quality for which we admire her.

Most of Aristotle’s examples show that he thought of hamartia primarily as a failure to recognize
someone, often a blood relative. In his commentary Gerald Else sees a close connection between
the concepts of hamartia, recognition, and catharsis. For Aristotle the most tragic situation
possible was the unwitting murder of one family member by another. Mistaken identity allows
Oedipus to kill his father Laius on the road to Thebes and subsequently to marry Jocasta, his
mother; only later does he recognize his tragic error. However, because he commits the crime
in ignorance and pays for it with remorse, self-mutilation, and exile, the plot reaches resolution
or catharsis, and we pity him as a victim of ironic fate instead of accusing him of blood guilt.
While Aristotle’s concept of tragic error fits the model example of Oedipus quite well, there are
several tragedies in which the protagonists suffer due to circumstances totally beyond their
control. Hamartia plays no part in these tragedies.

Example: In the Oresteia trilogy, Orestes must avenge his father’s death by killing his
mother. Aeschylus does not present Orestes as a man whose nature destines him to commit
matricide, but as an unfortunate, innocent son thrown into a terrible dilemma not of his making.
In The Trojan Women by Euripides, the title characters are helpless victims of the conquering
Greeks; ironically, Helen, the only one who deserves blame for the war, escapes punishment
by seducing her former husband Menelaus. Heracles, in Euripides’ version of the story, goes
insane and slaughters his wife and children, not for anything he has done but because Hera,
queen of the gods, wishes to punish him for being the illegitimate son of Zeus and a mortal
woman.

Searching for the tragic flaw in a character often oversimplifies the complex issues of tragedy.
For example, the critic predisposed to looking for the flaw in Oedipus’ character usually points
to his stubborn pride, and concludes that this trait leads directly to his downfall. However,
several crucial events in the plot are not motivated by pride at all: (1) Oedipus leaves Corinth to
protect the two people he believes to be his parents; (2) his choice of Thebes as a destination is
merely coincidental and/or fated, but certainly not his fault; (3) his defeat of the Sphinx
demonstrates wisdom rather than blind stubbornness. True, he kills Laius on the road, refusing
to give way on a narrow pass, but the fact that this happens to be his father cannot be attributed
to a flaw in his character. Furthermore, these actions occur prior to the action of the play itself.
The central plot concerns Oedipus’ desire as a responsible ruler to rid his city of the gods’ curse
and his unyielding search for the truth, actions which deserve our admiration rather than
contempt as a moral flaw. Oedipus falls because of a complex set of factors, not from any single
character trait.

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