Assignment

What Is a Tragic Hero?

Tragedy was first defined by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322), and critics have been arguing about it ever since. Aristotle's definition is not a rule for what tragedy should be; it is a description of what he believed tragedy was, based on his observations of Greek drama, particularly the works of Sophocles.

According to Aristotle, the function of tragedy is to arouse pity and fear in the audience so that we may be purged, or cleansed, of these unsettling emotions. Aristotle's term for this emotional purging is the Greek word catharsis. Although no one is exactly sure what Aristotle meant by catharsis, it seems clear that he was referring to that strangely pleasurable sense of emotional release we experience after watching a great tragedy. For some reason, we usually feel exhilarated, not depressed at the end.

According to Aristotle, a tragedy can arouse these twin motions of pity and fear only if it presents a certain type of hero or heroine who is neither completely good nor completely bad. Aristotle also says that the tragic hero should be someone "highly" renowned and prosperous," which in Aristotle's day meant a member of the royalty. Why not an ordinary working person, we might ask. The answer is simply that the hero must fall from tremendous good fortune. Otherwise, we wouldn't feel such pity and fear.

Critics have argued over what Aristotle meant by the tragic hero's "error or frailty." Is the hero defeated because of a single error of judgment? Or is the cause of the hero's downfall a tragic flaw or a fundamental character weakness such as destructive pride, ruthless ambition, or obsessive jealousy? In either interpretation, the key point is that the hero is on some level responsible for his or her own fate or of someone else's villainy. By the end of the play, the tragic hero does not curse fate or the gods. The real hero is humbled and enlightened_ by the tragedy.

Yet we, the audience, feel that the hero's punishment exceeds the crime, and that the hero gets more that he or she deserves. We feel pity because the hero is a suffering human being who is flawed like us.

We feel fear because the hero is better that we are, and still he failed. What hope can there be for us?

Writing Assignment: In a three-point essay, explain how Oedipus, Antigone, and Creon (also spelled Kreon) demonstrate the principles outlined by Aristotle.