The "Tragic Hero" is so embedded into our modern culture, that every high school student will end up reading three or four stories that revolve around this type of protagonist throughout their education.
The Tragic Hero was first thought up and regulated by a famous Greek philosopher and playwriter, Aristotle, but most people associate this type of character with the monumental works of a certain William Shakespeare.
Aristotle made his blueprint for the tragic hero simple and blatant, a tragic hero must be:
- well-renowned, usually rich and famous
- virtuous/noble
- have a clear and obvious "tragic flaw"
- suffer a reversal of fortune, directly resulting from the "tragic flaw"
If any of this sounds familiar to you, congratulations! You must have read Shakespeare at some point in your life. Shakespeare's works in the genre of "Tragedy", follow the model set out by Aristotle quite closely, with the addition of Shakespeare's own charismatic and beautiful storytelling. Characters such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo, are perfect examples of Aristotle's "Tragic Hero", and are timeless classics in each of their own rights.
A tragic hero's role in a tragedy is to be tragic. While that sentence itself can seem tragic and obvious, it is the sole purpose of this literary archetype. The issues that a tragic hero must wrestle throughout their story is meant to incite pity and fear from the audience. If the audience leaves the theatre thinking about the themes of the play in a conflicting way to how they did before, the play has done an incredible job at inciting these themes.
Tragedies do not typically have a "good" ending, as the "tragic" nature of their existence shines through. The flaws that the hero have, may originally seem desirable to the audience, but after seeing that it is that character's downfall, the world is flipped on its head.
The Tragic Hero is consistently used to prove a point to the audience, and is a quite convincing way to make a point. The more creative forms of these opinions in action, become all time classics.
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