Tragic Hero, Classiscal Trajedy, Trajic Flaw
Tragic Hero, Classiscal Trajedy, Trajic Flaw
Tragic Hero, Classiscal Trajedy, Trajic Flaw
Oedipus, the main character of the drama, is a great king with ideal traits in his individual personality also; but
he is tragic due to a tragic flaw in terms of his moral disposition. That mixture makes us have the tragic
experience of catharsis at the end of the drama when all the good of Oedipus is 'wasted' in his struggle against
the bad.
Sophocles
In his struggle against the evil of his life, written by his fate, he invites the very doom he has always struggled to
escape from.
The name of Oedipus, which means "swell foot" in Greek, comes from his swollen feet. Oedipus is that ill-fated
tragic character whose parents had to throw him away on the third day of his birth, because it was told that he
would kill his father and marry his mother. He is that tragic man who was unfortunately pitied by the shepherd
who was supposed to throw him in the mountains of Kithairon. And instead of "dying that fortunate little death",
he was given to the shepherd of another king Polybos. He got that name and the terrible, tragic mark on his
swollen feet because of the skewer that his parents had used to pin his feet together before throwing him. And
since he was destined to kill his father, he grew up in Corinth and ran away from there, on hearing the rumors
of his evil fate, precisely to come to Thebes, kill his father and marry his mother, without knowing that he was
King Oedipus can be taken as a typical hero of classical tragedies. Aristotle, the first philosopher to theorize the
art of drama, obviously studied Oedipus and based his observation about the qualities of a tragic hero upon the
example of Oedipus. In Aristotle's conception, a tragic hero is a distinguished person occupying a high position,
living in prosperous circumstances and falling into misfortune because of an error in judgment. Aristotle used
the word "hamartia" to indicate the protagonist's tragic weakness. According to Aristotelian percepts about
tragedy, a tragic hero would be a man of noticeable qualities of behavior, intelligent and powerful, but by no
means perfect. The fall of a totally saint like figure or a totally depraved rogue would violate the moral
expectation and the audience would think such fall design less, chaotic and unjustifiable. Oedipus is neither a
saint nor a rogue. Despite his qualities, he falls because of his mistakes. His position is indeed as frail as ours,
and he fails like common men in one sense, and such frailty of human position is what tragedy has to make us
realize.
In terms of the Aristotelian theory of tragedy, Oedipus is a tragic hero because he is not perfect, but has tragic
flaws. Aristotle points out that Oedipus' tragic flaw is excessive pride (hubris) and self-righteousness. He also
points out certain characteristics that determine as tragic hero. Using Oedipus as an ideal model, Aristotle says
that a tragic hero must be an important or influential man who commits an error in judgment, and who must
then suffer the consequences of his actions. The tragic hero must learn a lesson from his errors in judgment,
his tragic flaw, and become an example to the audience of what happens when great men fall from their high
Oedipus is a great and good king. The opening scene shows Oedipus in his magnificence, as a king who is so
concerned about the welfare of his people. He addresses them as "my children" as behooved of the good kings
of those times. He is a great man with respectable moral value and personality. As a man, he is dedicated to
fighting and avoiding evil. His quest for truth is in fact the cause of downfall, and that is one of the most tragic
things. As a king, he is an epitome itself. He loves his people. He gives his best to everything he does as a
person and as a king. He is so worried by the problem of plague that he hasn't been sleeping: indeed, he says
that he is suffering for the whole city alone. He has been walking restlessly instead of properly sleeping. He
says that he will not talk to people through messengers and will not send messengers to them; he comes to
them himself. He is a king of excellence, command and esteem. The priest glorifies the king as a man "Surest
in mortal ways and wisest in the ways of god". He is a man who has become the king as much through the
intelligence as through his power. It is he who solved the Sphinx's riddle and saved all citizens from the
monster. He has always become the ultimate and almost the only rescue and hope at the time of misfortune.
Oedipus is also a morally good personality, to a great extent. It is so good of him to try to avoid the unbearable
fate that he hears of we see that Oedipus is not only too confident in his own analysis and understanding of
reality, he is also always afraid of doing wrong, He is adamant in his quest for the truth and the welfare of the
people. He surrenders to the power of fate at the end. He is of respectful towards the oracles, in the sense that
he has been afraid of what they have told him, and he does respect Teiresias before he is insulted by the
But as a tragic character, Oedipus has his typical tragic flaw or "hamartia". Obviously pride is his hamartia. He
is too proud and arrogant, and presumes too much about his own understanding and his powers to control his
life. But he can't control reality, chances, fate and time. He has a bad temper and wrong judgment: the error of
a tragic character is basically the "error of judgment" according to Aristotle. Oedipus wrongly judges his
situation. It may be debatable as to whether the murder of a life-threatening stranger and the marriage of a
consort are crimes. But, due to his presumption about his abilities, he has disobeyed the gods and his destiny.
In his confidence upon what he knows and can do, he escapes from the professed evil fate, he kills a man old
enough to be his father, and he marries a woman old enough to be his mother, without even doubting his wits.
His defiance of his predestined fate would be, in the time of Sophocles, a great crime. At least, we can clearly
understand that Sophocles seems to be rather conservatively suggesting that the modem men of his time were
wrong in trying to put too much emphasis on human potentials and powers of Understanding, action and
shaping of their own lives. Whatever our twenty-first evaluation of the actions of Oedipus, the evaluation of his
own creator Sophocles (and of the tellers of the myth in ancient times) is that it is morally wrong to fight against
It seems that Oedipus could have avoided his ill-destiny if he had taken certain precautions. If he could promise
of never laying a hand on a man and marrying an aged woman, he would have done better. From a human and
the more prudent point of view, it can be concluded that Oedipus falls because he remains blind at many
circumstances. In any case, he is a tragic character because he is humanly frail, morally intermediate, and
good, but not unflawed by a tragic weakness, and therefore identifiable to us and our own inescapable human
condition even today. Sophocles tragic character Oedipus is a unique tragic character that is entangled in the
moral paradox of human life and reality. His life embodies the paradox of the human situation in which such
Oedipus as a tragic character is heroic because of his struggle, pitiable because of his weakness before the
forces of his destiny, and his tragedy arouses fear in us, because he is in the same predicament (difficult
situation) like us, though he was a great man otherwise. The irony of his fate is that fate has done what it
wanted to before he started actually believing in it. The tragedy of Oedipus is that of the realization of his
failure. And the tragedy of Oedipus is a tragedy of the human situation. His story tells us that man must do his
Biography of Sophocles
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Sophocles
The dialogue as well as the language of the chorus also emphasizes the tragic message about the tragic life of
an example to define and illustrate the qualities of a tragedy. Aristotle's definition is a descriptive one (and not
prescriptive); the definition of tragedy has been modified because many great tragedies have been written
since without being confined to the Aristotelian features. However, it is feasible to first see this tragedy in terms
of Aristotle's definition.
Aristotle defined tragedy in terms of its plot, character and action. The plot of a tragedy must consist of one,
great and complete action. Each part of the play must contribute to the final tragic consequences and effect.
The cause and effect must be logically linked: no external force must intervene. The main tragic character must
possess great status and ideal qualities; but he must also have a weakness, though not a moral flaw —this
weakness is called ‘hamartia'. The consequence of the character's own error of judgment or of his wrong action
must bring the fall, from which there is no escape. This should give us the sense of inevitability, making us
accept and realize the reality and the weakness of the character. The reversal and discovery must reveal to the
character and the audience the cause of the character's undoing and downfall. It should not be the doing of the
Besides the tragic plot, we have a typically tragic character, Oedipus. Oedipus is a tragic character because he
is a great man with some ideals and with a commitment to find out the truth and cure the problem besetting is
country. But like a tragic character, he has a tragic weakness. His tragic weakness is that in the confidence of
what he knows or can know he becomes too careless and disrespectful towards the gods, the fate that the
oracles have disclosed for him: he defies to any inner voice and wisdom with regards to fate and destiny.
Another tragic element in the play Oedipus Rex is its tragic atmosphere. From beginning to end, we are
exposed to very serious and frightening situations. The dramatic conflict among the characters and the
dramatic tension that builds in our minds never settles down; and there is no comic element, even like in
Shakespearean tragedies. Like in a typical tragedy, the dramatist has designed even the dialogue so carefully
as to create and sustain a very serious tone and mood throughout. The hopes that always lead us to fear, and
the anxiety that always leads us to frustration finally contributes to the catharsis. Our false hopes and wishes as
prompted and guided by the chorus finally collapse into the tragic purification of emotions, which is called
catharsis or purgation (in the audience), along with the tragic change in the characters. The chorus is also a
corollary element that contributes considerably in the tragic characteristics of this drama.
Biography of Sophocles
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by definition, a “bad” character trait; rather, it is simply the characteristic from which the reversal of the tragic
hero’s fortune ensues. Courage or jealousy may equally be the trait whose expression leads to the destructive
consequences.
The term tragic flaw is often used as a synonym for hamartia, but this usage is not strictly correct. Hamartia is
the more general of the two terms, applicable to any error in judgment that brings about the protagonist’s
downfall; tragic flaw refers specifically to an inherent character trait. Hamartia may result from a character’s
tragic flaw, but is not, technically speaking, the flaw itself. Rather, hamartia is the mistake that engenders the
protagonist’s downfall and may thus include errors in judgment based on incomplete information regarding a
Related Topics
William Shakespeare: Biography
Sophocles: Biography
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