Tragic Heroes

Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, the tragic hero, the tragic flaw, and the tragic fall, has survived pretty well. It is not always the rule that great or small playwrights follow, but it remains the standard against which their forays into tragedy are judged, or at least compared. Shakespeare was very willing to violate some of Aristotle’s precepts, especially as his career progressed, but that gives us no less reason to understand what the great Greek philosopher wrote in the first place, based on his observations of the considerable body of tragedy that he was privileged to witness in his lifetime.

To start simply with the tragic hero himself, Aristotle said that he must be both great and good. By “great,” he meant a man in a high position such as a king or a general. He reasoned that the tragic fall of a lesser man will not sufficiently engage the attention or emotions of the audience. In the greater scheme of things (cf. the medieval idea of the Great Chain of Being) he wouldn’t be falling very far. [In modern times, Arthur Miller mounted a very conscious challenge to this idea with his play Death of a Salesman and his essay Tragedy and the Common Man. The salesman’s wife delivers a heart-tugging statement of Miller’s premise in her “I’m not saying he’s a great man…” speech.]

By “good,” he meant a man of sufficient moral quality that we will lament, “What a loss!” when his fall comes. The fall of a villain is just what we expect and desire; it does not teach the moral lesson that the Greeks were trying to teach in their dramas. (The Greeks, remember, used their plays for religious reasons, as acts of worship to the god Dionysus—not that Dionysus was a particularly “moral” god!—so moral improvement was to be the goal of worthwhile scripts.) We think of ourselves as good, so we will identify best with a good hero and take warning that if he falls, we might also unless we beware.

However, this good man must have a serious moral flaw that will contribute powerfully to his downfall. The more clearly the audience members can identify this flaw and see its consequences, the better they will be morally instructed about that particular flaw. So here is the fulcrum of the delicate balance that made a great tragedy in Aristotle’s view. The flaw had to be a grievous one yet the hero had to be, on balance, good. This required that external factors must also contribute to the fall. These could include coincidence or accident, villainy on the part of others, etc. The delicate balance is that too much tragic flaw makes the hero too close to a villain, and too much external factor weakens or destroys the “moral lesson” aspect. My extreme example of the latter is that a good, great man at the height of his virtue is walking down a sidewalk and is killed by a flowerpot falling from a fourth-floor window.

Tragic flaws are not just moral slip-ups or particular unwise choices. They must be deeply-rooted flaws in character, not individual sins but a malignant core of sin that metastasizes to take harmful control of a man’s life. The most common example in the Greek tragedies, and certainly represented among Shakespeare’s heroes also, is “hubris,” the Greek word for a titanic level of pride that challenges even “the gods.” King Leontes in the first half of the tragicomedy A Winter’s Tale provides the most blatant of Shakespeare’s examples when he reluctantly consults the god Apollo’s oracle at Delphi to determine whether his charge of adultery against his queen is true, but then, when the god’s verdict in the queen’s favor is unsealed and read at her public trial, bellows, “There is no truth at all i’ th’ oracle. The sessions shall proceed. This is mere falsehood.” (III.2.151-152) The divine retribution comes down on Leontes’ head immediately.

Other seemingly obvious flaws that bring about some of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes include Macbeth’s “ambition” in the negative sense of challenging God, and Othello’s “green-eyed monster,” jealousy. But even in these cases, Shakespeare makes sure the flaw is not as one-dimensional as it appears. Othello’s jealousy, for example, is definitely fueled by his insecurity and gullibility. But are these tragic flaws? And could the jealousy have grown without them?

Even more often, Shakespeare builds outright ambiguity into the question of his tragic hero’s flaw. Identifying Hamlet’s flaw has been a controversial exercise for centuries now. Indecision? Yes, but is that a moral failing? And what is Romeo’s tragic flaw? Acting too hastily on his first-sight youthful passion for Juliet by marrying within hours? His killing of Tybalt in a street brawl he had tried to avoid? Mistakes in judgment, but moral flaws worthy of death? King Lear’s flaw? Bad temper? Misjudging his daughters? Shakespeare complicates this one by giving us a tragic hero who is eighty years old and showing signs of senility from the beginning of the play. [Arthur Miller borrows from this device, complicating the tragic flaw question with his salesman’s mental state. A fair question: How responsible can people be for the deteriorating of their own minds?]

The ultimate tragic fall of the hero almost always includes his death. Sophocles’ Greek classic Oedipus the King is one exception, but only because the hero chooses something he considers worse than death rather than the expected suicide.

A Christian study of literary tragedy can be enriched by having students apply what they’re learning to the Bible’s account of King Saul in First Samuel chapters 9-11, 13-24, 26-29, 31.