Discovering the Tragic Hero: Ancient and Modern - Essay Example

Discovering the Tragic Hero: Ancient and Modern The concept of the tragic hero was first brought forward in ancient Greek mythology through the writings of the philosopher Aristotle as he described the important individual characteristics the tragic hero must possess. Although Aristotle outlines three requisite character traits that the tragic hero should possess, he qualifies the definition of the tragic hero with a set of events that must also take place before the hero can be considered truly tragic. Once this process is understood, it is easy to see how the sudden downfall of a mighty man, such as Oedipus the King from the play by Sophocles for example, would be dramatic and shocking to a public dominated by strict social classes. Moving into the more modern period, though, a subtle shift in the approach to tragedy began to take shape. The popular playwright William Shakespeare explored these concepts within his work as is demonstrated in plays such as Hamlet. In this play, the main character is given greater control over his own fate and it is due to his decisions and actions that things play out the way they do. Had he taken a different approach to the elements that confronted him, Hamlet may have been able to avert disaster for himself and his house. Thus, a shift occurred in the definition of the tragic hero from the ancient world to that of Shakespeare’s day which can be discovered through a comparison of the title character in “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles and the character of Hamlet from William Shakespeare’s play of the same name which serves to retain the effects of the tragic while still placing a greater emphasis on man’s responsibility and control. The tragic hero had been present in a number of plays and dramas of the ancient Greeks before Aristotle, but Aristotle codified, so to speak, the requirements for a character to be considered a tragic hero. This idea was generally applied to characters with potential for tremendous greatness, such as kings and princes or those who had some sort of noble claim. However, each of these characters are considered destined to fail as a result of some tragic flaw inherent in their nature, often associated in some way with their greatest strength and therefore an aspect of their character that the individual is inordinately proud to exercise (Aristotle, 1998). According to Zarro (2001), “the tragic effect will be stronger if the hero is ‘better than we are’, in that he is of higher than ordinary moral worth. Such a man is shown as suffering a change in fortune from happiness to misery because of a mistaken act, to which he is led by his hamartia (his ‘effort of judgment’) or, as it is often literally translated, his tragic flaw.” Despite this, in more recent centuries, this definition has come to be applied to those of lesser stature as well, characters that the ‘common man’ can identify with, often including those who only aspire to be respected within their own household. What has become more important than noble status in the tragic hero cycle are the three-fold process through which the tragic hero progresses. According to Vest (2002), heroism today refers more to the actions of the character, as someone who embodies all of our ideals regarding what is good and noble in human nature, rather than the birth or earned social status of the character him or herself. The process of the tragic hero must follow a basic pattern of the character committing some act in the excess of their pride that inevitably leads to their downfall (Aristotle, 1998). This is the first stage. The second stage occurs when the character admits that the problems they’ve been experiencing are the result of their own actions and pride. The third stage enables the tragic hero to experience a moment of enlightenment and redemption, but often not a return to the high status of their former life (Aristotle, 1998). Tracing through this process, it can be seen that the status of nobility is not actually an important element in the equation as anyone can experience a downfall as the result of their own mistakes, admit where they were wrong and experience enlightenment as a result. However, the element of shock does seem to be an important contributing element – the tragic hero must not have necessarily expected the outcome to have occurred, and neither can the audience (Zarro, 2001). In the ancient world, people still generally held a degree of faith in their nobility, tending to attribute their social leaders with adhering to a higher standard of human behavior. Thus, it was more shocking to have one of these leaders tumble from his nobility, particularly as a result of his own actions (Bryant, 1996). In more modern times, a greater educated and greater informed public has a cynical tendency to expect their leaders to fall, typically as a result of personal characteristics. This introduced a shift in the social standing of the hero from the top of the heap to the bottom of the pile without significantly altering the ‘tragic’ in tragic hero. This shift in social status of the tragic hero can be found in a comparison between King Oedipus as an example of the ancient tragic hero and Hamlet as an example of the modern. Oedipus has often been held up as the supreme example of the tragic hero, having all three required character traits and passing through all three required actions of Aristotle’s definition. For example, when the people of Thebes come to him seeking relief from the plague, Oedipus chastises them for their lack of faith in his abilities, as if he really were a god. Referring to himself as the “world-renowned king” underscores his prideful streak early in the play. Oedipus is confident that he has outwitted fate because he and Jocasta have several children together and the kingdom prospers. Thus his noble spirit is that he is a noble king capable of making wise decisions, yet this confidence in himself also proves to be his fatal flaw. In making the promise to discover and punish to the full extent of social customs the murderer of the former king despite warnings not to, Oedipus demonstrates this pride in making the decision that will lead to his downfall: “Well, I will start afresh and once again / Make dark things clear” (139-140). Oedipus realizes his mistake late in the play beginning with Creon’s criticism of him: “You are obstinate— / obviously unhappy to concede, / and when you lose your temper, you go too far. / But men like that find it most difficult / to tolerate themselves” (814-819). As he compares events in his own life with those of Jocasta’s, Oedipus is shocked into realizing the truth of himself. “A curse / I laid upon myself. With these hands of mine, / these killer’s hands, I now contaminate / the dead man’s bed. Am I not depraved? / Am I not utterly abhorrent? / Now I must fly into exile and there, / a fugitive, never see my people, / never set foot in my native land again” (983-990). Realizing it was through his own prideful confidence in his judgment and hasty action to fulfill that judgment that he is now publicly exposed as the killer of a king and parent, the incestuous lover of his mother and father of his own brothers and sisters, Oedipus receives enlightenment that there is no escaping one’s destiny and takes definitive action to ensure he can never tempt fate again. Many of these elements are in existence in Shakespeare’s play as well, but with some subtle yet profound differences. Kierkegaard writes about the specific elements of tragedy in his essay “The Ancient Tragical Motive as Reflected in the Modern.” Also turning to Aristotelian ideals as a means of identifying essential tragic elements, Keirkegaard argues that all tragedy is simply that, tragedy. However, given that all tragedy is based on these same ideals, he then builds a case to suggest that the major difference between ancient and modern tragedy falls primarily upon the scope of the suffering. Within ancient tragedy, “even if the individual moved freely, he still rested in the substantial categories of state, family and destiny … The hero’s destruction is, therefore, not only a result of his own deeds, but is also a suffering” (Kierkegaard 552-553) of the entire state surrounding the character. However, modern tragedy retains in it the reflection of the disjointed modern society in which more and more people are forced to act alone. “In modern tragedy, the hero’s destruction is really not suffering, but is action … modern tragedy has no epic foreground, no epic heritage. The hero stands and falls entirely on his own” (Kierkegaard 553). Rather than sharing in the suffering of the mighty from a relatively innocent viewpoint and thus experiencing the deeply moving but somehow healing forces of tragic sorrow, Kierkegaard suggests that modern tragedy conveys a sense of tragic pain, which is sharper and leads to despair rather than resolution. By tracing the modern through Shakespeare, these differences can be seen to be more a matter of approach than actual elements of the writing itself. Hamlet has typically been approached with an aim toward proving that the play is structured within the classical Greek style of tragedy, but is rarely approached with alternative expectations. When one approaches the play with the conception of domestic tragedy in mind, the play easily falls within this category as Kierkegaard defines it, allowing the hero to stand or fall on his own. Hamlet is alone in his suffering throughout the entire play. This is foreshadowed early as his first spoken words in the play, “a little more than kin, and less than kind!” (I, ii), are spoken in an aside to himself, a process that will continue throughout the remainder of the action. He is abandoned by his mother, who has married his uncle very soon after Hamlet has lost his father forcing division between mother and son that proves impassable as he tells her, “What devil was’t / That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? / Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, / Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all” (III, iv, 77-80). In his isolation, Hamlet is not even able to trust the information brought to him from the spirit world. “The spirit that I have seen may be a devil, and the devil hath power t’ assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps out of my weakness and my melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me” (II, ii, 584-589). He even isolates himself from his friends in the implementation of his plan, telling them, “here as before, never, so help you mercy, / How strange or odd some’er I bear myself / (As I perchance hereafter shall think meet / to put an antic disposition on)” (I,v, 169-172) and from Ophelia, telling her to remove herself to her own form of isolation by joining a nunnery. In addition to being forced to act alone, Hamlet himself brings his status down to the average individual as he beats himself over his inability to act, “Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, that I, the son of a dear father murdered, prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, must like a whore unpack my heart with words and fall a-cursing like a very drab” (II, ii, 568-572). In his isolation, the trouble within his own household and in his average character traits, Hamlet can thus be seen as a domestic tragedy. In looking at these two plays, it can be determined that both characters contain necessary elements of the tragic hero’s character. Both Oedipus and Hamlet have a noble nature to them. Oedipus is himself a king, married to a queen and a competent, respected leader of his people. Hamlet, although young, is a prince in his own right and would be king had his mother not opted to marry his uncle. Excessive pride in their own understandings is also present in both characters, contributing both to their achievements in life as well as to their downfalls. Oedipus is overconfident in his own ability to make decisions, refusing to listen to the advice of others which eventually leads to his exposure as the lowest form of human being. Hamlet is either too confident in his ability to use reason to come to an acceptable conclusion or is not confident enough in his understanding of what is really going on. This belief prevents Hamlet from making the decisive moves required to avoid his own death as well as the deaths of many people to whom he feels tied. For both characters, their fatal flaw is revealed as an unswerving dedication to their flawed thinking even after they have discovered it is flawed. More importantly, both characters undergo the necessary process of the tragic hero. Oedipus makes the decision to aggressively pursue the murderer of the old king only to discover it was himself. Hamlet aggressively pursues his scholastic need for reason and proof before taking decisive action. Both characters are finally forced to admit their own complicity in their downfalls and experience enlightenment as a result. Oedipus discovers he cannot escape fate while Hamlet discovers that he should have trusted to the supernatural. Thus, both characters are easily classified as tragic heroes. Given the different social structures in which these plays were produced, each character can be seen to be most impacting upon their own audiences because of their shocking quality and their accessibility to the audience. Works Cited “Aristotle.” Critica Links. The University of Hawaii, (1998). February 15, 2010 Bryant, Joseph M. Moral Codes and Social Structure in Ancient Greece: A Sociology of Greek Ethnics from Homer to the Epicureans and Stoics. New York: State University of New York Press, 1996. Kierkegaard, Soren. “The Ancient Tragical Motive as Reflected in the Modern.” Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Scandinavia. Sophocles. Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra. Oxford World’s Classics. Ed. Edith Hall. Oxford University Press, 1998. Vest, Rob. “Shakespearean Tragedy in Othello: The Moor of Venice.” Late Plays of Shakespeare. (2002). February 15, 2010 Zarro, Josephine. “More Terms Defined: Aristotelian Definition of Tragedy.” Gallery of Tragic Heroes in Literature and Life. (July 19, 2001). Teach the Teachers. Read More