Aristotle concept of ideal tragic hero

1. 1. I Am
2. 2. Presentation Topic Aristotle concept of ideal tragic hero
3. 3. Definition • Aristotle defines that the tragic hero as a person who must evoke a sense of
pity and fear in the audience • A person who faces difficulties in the face of danger.
4. 4. Element of tragic hero Here we have the basic element of tragic hero explained by
Aristotle 1.Hamartia. 2.Hubris. 3.Peripeteia. 4.Anagnorisis. 5.Nemesis. 6.Catharsis.
5. 5. Characteristics of tragic hero The character must be noble in the nature •The hero must
be intelligent. •He has a deeper feeling. •He has a moral elevation. •He is not an ordinary
man. •He has out standing qualities.
6. 6. The main features of tragic hero 1. Goodness 2. Likeness 3. Consistent
7. 7. Goodness • The character must be good • A character is good if his word deep and action
reveal that his purpose is good • Good means fine or noble • In Greek sense the word
goodness implies a number of virtues • It is the very foundation for the basic sympathy in the
audience
8. 8. Likeness • The characters must have likeness • They must be like ourselves or true to life
• In other word they must have virtues, joys and sorrow • The character must be an
intermediate sort, mixture of good and evil
9. 9. Consistent • The character must be consistent • The character must be true to their own
nature • There should be no sudden change in the character • The action of the character
must be necessary and probable outcome of his character
10. 10. Example of tragic hero Oedipus from Oedipus rex • Aristotle has used Oedipus as a
perfect example of tragic hero • He has hubris that is his pride makes him blind to the truth •
He refuses to listen to wise man like Tiresias • He is tragic because he is struggle against the
forces of his fate and pitiable due to his weakness
11. 11. Conclusion • Aristotle concept of tragic hero is not unacceptable • Though in some ways
he had a limited vision

Aristotle's concept of ideal tragic hero: Hamartia

No passage in “The Poetics” with the exception of the Catharsis phrase has attracted so much
critical attention as his ideal of the tragic hero.

The function of a tragedy is to arouse the emotions of pity and fear and Aristotle deduces the
qualities of his hero from this function. He should be good, but not perfect, for the fall of a
perfect man from happiness into misery, would be unfair and repellent and will not arouse pity.
Similarly, an utterly wicked person passing from happiness to misery may satisfy our moral
sense, but will lack proper tragic qualities. His fall will be well-deserved and according to
‘justice’. It excites neither pity nor fear. Thus entirely good and utterly wicked persons are not
suitable to be tragic heroes.

Similarly, according to Aristotelian law, a saint would be unsuitable as a tragic hero. He is on the
side of the moral order and hence his fall shocks and repels. Besides, his martyrdom is a spiritual
victory which drowns the feeling of pity. Drama, on the other hand, requires for its effectiveness
a militant and combative hero. It would be important to remember that Aristotle’s conclusions
are based on the Greek drama and he is lying down the qualifications of an ideal tragic hero. He
is here discussing what is the very best and not what is good. Overall, his views are justified, for
it requires the genius of a Shakespeare to arouse sympathy for an utter villain, and saints as
successful tragic heroes have been extremely rare.

Having rejected perfection as well as utter depravity and villainy, Aristotle points out that:

“The ideal tragic hero … must be an intermediate kind of person, a man not pre-eminently
virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice or depravity but
by some error of judgment.”

The ideal tragic hero is a man who stands midway between the two extremes. He is not
eminently good or just, though he inclines to the side of goodness. He is like us, but raised above
the ordinary level by a deeper vein of feeling or heightened powers of intellect or will. He is
idealized, but still he has so much of common humanity as to enlist our interest and sympathy.

The tragic hero is not evil or vicious, but he is also not perfect and his disaster is brought upon
him by his own fault. The Greek word used here is “Hamartia” meaning “missing the mark”. He
falls not because of the act of outside agency or evil but because of Hamartia or “miscalculation”
on his part. Hamartia is not a moral failing and it is unfortunate that it was translated as “tragic
flaw” by Bradley. Aristotle himself distinguishes Hamartia from moral failing. He means by it
some error or judgment. He writes that the cause of the hero’s fall must lie “not in depravity, but
in some error or Hamartia on his part”. He does not assert or deny anything about the connection
of Hamartia with hero’s moral failings.

“It may be accompanied by moral imperfection, but it is not itself a moral imperfection, and in
the purest tragic situation the suffering hero is not morally to blame.”

Thus Hamartia is an error or miscalculation, but the error may arise from any of the three ways:
It may arise from “ignorance of some fact or circumstance”, or secondly, it may arise from hasty
or careless view of the special case, or thirdly, it may be an error voluntary, but not deliberate, as
acts committed in anger. Else and Martian Ostwald interpret Hamartia and say that the hero has a
tendency to err created by lack of knowledge and he may commit a series of errors. This
tendency to err characterizes the hero from the beginning and at the crisis of the play it is
complemented by the recognition scene, which is a sudden change “from ignorance to
knowledge”.

In fact, Hamartia is a word with various shades of meaning and has been interpreted by different
critics. Still, all serious modern Aristotelian scholarship agreed that Hamartia is not moral
imperfection. It is an error of judgment, whether arising from ignorance of some material
circumstance or from rashness of temper or from some passion. It may even be a character, for
the hero may have a tendency to commit errors of judgment and may commit series of errors.
This last conclusion is borne out by the play Oedipus Tyrannus to which Aristotle refers time and
again and which may be taken to be his ideal. In this play, hero’s life is a chain or errors, the
most fatal of all being his marriage with his mother. If King Oedipus is Aristotle’s ideal hero, we
can say with Butcher that:

“His conception of Hamartia includes all the three meanings mentioned above, which in English
cannot be covered by a single term.”

Hamartia is an error, or a series of errors, “whether morally culpable or not,” committed by an

otherwise noble person, and these errors derive him to his doom. The tragic irony lies in the fact
that hero may err mistakenly without any evil intention, yet he is doomed no less than immorals
who sin consciously. He has Hamartia and as a result his very virtues hurry him to his ruin. Says
Butcher:

“Othello in the modern drama, Oedipus in the ancient, are the two most conspicuous examples of
ruin wrought by character, noble indeed, but not without defects, acting in the dark and, as it
seemed, for the best.”

Aristotle lays down another qualification for the tragic hero. He must be, “of the number of those
in the enjoyment of great reputation and prosperity.” He must be a well-reputed individual
occupying a position of lofty eminence in society. This is so because Greed tragedy, with which
alone Aristotle was familiar, was written about a few distinguished royal families. Aristotle
considers eminence as essential for the tragic hero. But Modern drama demonstrates that the
meanest individual can also serve as a tragic hero, and that tragedies of Sophoclean grandeur can
be enacted even in remote country solitudes.

However, Aristotle’s dictum is quite justified on the principle that, “higher the state, the greater
the fall that follows,” or because heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes, while the
death of a beggar passes unnoticed. But it should be remembered that Aristotle nowhere says that
the hero should be a king or at least royally descended. They were the Renaissance critics who
distorted Aristotle and made the qualification more rigid and narrow.

ANOTHER VERSION

The Tragic Hero

Aristotle distinguishes between tragedy which depicts people of high or noble character, and
comedy which imitates those of low or base character (ch. 2). Renaissance scholars understood
this passage to mean that tragic characters must always be kings or princes, while comedy is
peopled with the working or servant classes, but Aristotle was not talking about social or
political distinctions. For him character is determined not by birth but by moral choice. A noble
person is one who chooses to act nobly. Tragic characters are those who take life seriously and
seek worthwhile goals, while comic characters are "good-for-nothings" who waste their lives in
trivial pursuits (Else 77). While it may be true that, as Arthur Miller argued, the common man is
a potential subject for tragedy (in the sense that one need not be a king or a demigod to act
nobly), the one thing a tragic protagonist cannot be is common. Ordinary humanity belongs on
the sidelines in tragedy, represented by the Greek chorus. The tragic protagonist is always larger
than life, a person of action whose decisions determine the fate of others and seem to shake the
world itself.

The hero of tragedy is not perfect, however. To witness a completely virtuous person fall from
fortune to disaster would provoke moral outrage at such an injustice. Likewise, the downfall of a
villainous person is seen as appropriate punishment and does not arouse pity or fear. The best
type of tragic hero, according to Aristotle, exists "between these extremes . . . a person who is
neither perfect in virtue and justice, nor one who falls into misfortune through vice and
depravity, but rather, one who succumbs through some miscalculation" (ch. 13). The
term hamartia, which Golden translates as "miscalculation," literally means "missing the mark,"
taken from the practice of archery.

Much confusion exists over this crucial term. Critics of previous centuries once
understood hamartia to mean that the hero must have a "tragic flaw," a moral weakness in
character which inevitably leads to disaster. This interpretation comes from a long tradition of
dramatic criticism which seeks to place blame for disaster on someone or something: "Bad things
don't just happen to good people, so it must be someone's fault." This was the "comforting"
response Job's friends in the Old Testament story gave him to explain his suffering: "God is
punishing you for your wrongdoing." For centuries tragedies were held up as moral illustrations
of the consequences of sin.

Given the nature of most tragedies, however, we should not define hamartia as tragic flaw.
While the concept of a moral character flaw may apply to certain tragic figures, it seems
inappropriate for many others. There is a definite causal connection between Creon's pride which
precipitates his destruction, but can Antigone's desire to see her brother decently buried be called
a flaw in her character which leads to her death? Her stubborn insistence on following a moral
law higher than that of the state is the very quality for which we admire her.

Searching for the tragic flaw in a character often oversimplifies the complex issues of tragedy.
For example, the critic predisposed to looking for the flaw in Oedipus' character usually points to
his stubborn pride, and concludes that this trait leads directly to his downfall. However, several
crucial events in the plot are not motivated by pride at all: (1) Oedipus leaves Corinth to protect
the two people he believes to be his parents; (2) his choice of Thebes as a destination is merely
coincidental and/or fated, but certainly not his fault; (3) his defeat of the Sphinx demonstrates
wisdom rather than blind stubbornness. True, he kills Laius on the road, refusing to give way on
a narrow pass, but the fact that this happens to be his father cannot be attributed to a flaw in his
character. (A modern reader might criticize him for killing anyone, but the play never indicts
Oedipus simply for murder.) Furthermore, these actions occur prior to the action of the play
itself. The central plot concerns Oedipus' desire as a responsible ruler to rid his city of the gods'
curse and his unyielding search for the truth, actions which deserve our admiration rather than
contempt as a moral flaw. Oedipus falls because of a complex set of factors, not from any single
character trait.

This misunderstanding can be corrected if we realize that Aristotle discusses hamartia in

the Poetics not as an aspect of character (ch. 15) but rather as an incident in the plot (ch. 13).
What Aristotle means by hamartiamight better be translated as "tragic error" (Golden's
miscalculation). Caught in a crisis situation, the protagonist makes an error in judgment or
action, "missing the mark," and disaster results.

Most of Aristotle's examples show that he thought of hamartia primarily as a failure to recognize
someone, often a blood relative. In his commentary Gerald Else sees a close connection between
the concepts of hamartia, recognition, and catharsis. For Aristotle the most tragic situation
possible was the unwitting murder of one family member by another. Mistaken identity allows
Oedipus to kill his father Laius on the road to Thebes and subsequently to marry Jocasta, his
mother; only later does he recognize his tragic error. However, because he commits the crime in
ignorance and pays for it with remorse, self-mutilation, and exile, the plot reaches resolution or
catharsis, and we pity him as a victim of ironic fate instead of accusing him of blood guilt.
While Aristotle's concept of tragic error fits the model example of Oedipus quite well, there are
several tragedies in which the protagonists suffer due to circumstances totally beyond their
control. In the Oresteia trilogy, Orestes must avenge his father's death by killing his mother.
Aeschylus does not present Orestes as a man whose nature destines him to commit matricide, but
as an unfortunate, innocent son thrown into a terrible dilemma not of his making. In The Trojan
Women by Euripides, the title characters are helpless victims of the conquering Greeks;
ironically, Helen, the only one who deserves blame for the war, escapes punishment by seducing
her former husband Menelaus. Heracles, in Euripides' version of the story, goes insane and
slaughters his wife and children, not for anything he has done but because Hera, queen of the
gods, wishes to punish him for being the illegitimate son of Zeus and a mortal woman. Hamartia
plays no part in these tragedies.

Aristotle’s Concept of the Ideal Tragic Hero

Introduction : Idealized Imitation of Objects in Tragedy
Poetry is a form of imitation. The objects of poetic imitation may be either better than real
life, worse than real life, or the same as they are in actual life. Aristotle thus distinguishes
between comedy and tragedy, for tragedy involves the imitation of men better than they are in
actual life. Hence tragedy presents a character in an idealised form. The tragic poet represents
life as it might be, not as it necessarily is. The characters are better than we are. It is, however,,
important to understand that the idealisation does not mean that the characters are good in a
strictly moral sense. It merely means that the characters live a more complete and intense life
than the real men and women dare to in the real world. This is what makes the characters in a
tragedy awesome1, as they are on a higher plane than ordinary men and women. Aristotle in
his Poetics puts forward a number of characteristics for the ideal tragic hero, which, however,
have proved to be quite controversial. Different critics have interpreted them in different manner.

The Main Features of the Tragic Character

In chapter 15, Aristotle speaks of dramatic characters and the four points to aim at in the
treatment of these characters. The four points are :
(i) that the characters should be good; • . (ii) that they should be appropriate;
(iii) that they should be close to reality or true to life;
1. inspiring a mixed feeling of fear, wonder, and reverence (usually caused by something
majestic).
(iv) that they should be consistent.
(i) Goodness. The first characteristic demanded by Aristotle has struck many critics as
somewhat strange and extraordinary. But it is essential to Aristotle’s theory because it is the very
foundation for the basic sympathy in the reader or audience, without which tragic emotions
cannot be evoked, or the tragic pleasure conveyed. A character is assumed ‘good’ if his words
and actions reveal a good purpose behind them. This is irrespective of the class to which he
belongs. Aristotle held woman to be inferior (and classified them with slaves), but even women,
if introduced in tragedy, should be shown to have some good in them. Aristotle based his
statements on an assumption that his spectators have a ‘normally balanced moral attitude’, as
Humphry House says. As such, they cannot be sympathetic towards one who is depraved or
odious1. Sympathy is necessary’as it is the very basis of the whole tragic pleasure. The bad man
does to arouse pity in us if he falls from happiness to misery.
Entirely wicked persons have no place in tragedy, according to Aristotle. But we must
remember that, by implication, we can see that Aristotle allows the “bad’ or wicked man in a
tragedy if he is indispensable to the plot. He says that he would not allow for “depravity of
character” when it is not necessary and no use is made of it. Thus Aristotle realises that 1)ad’
characters may be necessary in some tragedies. But this badness may occur only in so far as the
main action requires it. And the action of the play as a whole should be a ‘good’ one; in other
words, it should portray efforts to bring about a ‘good’ result. The characters initiating the main
action are, therefore, good. Yet, bad characters may occur in the process of realising this action.
It is thus that a wicked character like lago is not necessarily ruled out in the context of the
Aristotelian concept.
Aristotle’s dictum of ‘goodness’ in the tragic character has given rise to a great deal of
controversy and contradictory interpretations. To Corneille, the French playwright and critic, the
term ‘good’ meant magnificent. Dacier and Metastasio interpreted ‘good’ to mean Veil-marked’.
Telford considers the term to signify, ‘dramatically effective’. F.L Lucas is of the firm opinion
that the term implies being ‘fine’ or ‘noble’: The real point is, however, that Aristotle is clearly
insisting that the dramatis personae of tragedy shall be asfine a character as the plot permits.”
However, what Humphry House says in this context is clear and the most acceptable of the
interpretations. He points out that the term ‘good’ and ‘goodness’ in Greek meant something
different from what it has come to mean in terms of Christian ethics. The insistence on goodness
is not coloured with direct didacticism.
It does not have significant ‘moralistic’ implications, for in the Greek sense of the term, it
means the “habitual possession of one or more of the separate virtues, such as courage,
temperance, liberality, magnificence, gentleness, truthfulness, friendliness, and even witness.”
Thus the moralistic interpretation of “goodness” implying the effort to do one’s duty, should not
be read into what Aristotle says. Aristotle’s good man is good in so far as he desires specific,
positive good ends, and works towards attaining those ends, Aristotle’s use of the term ‘good’
implies something necessarily different -from what we mean by it today. If we remember that the
“pagan idea of virtue,... (Demands) strength and intensity of character rather than purity of soul,
Aristotle’s words ‘are not without force. Greek ethics had a larger element of aesthetics,” says
F.L., Lucas. The characters need not be virtuous in the Christian sense of the term. Indeed this
would lead to the play being rather undramatic as humility and modesty and meekness are
perhaps the most undramatic human qualities. By implication, what is required is a sense of
‘grandeur’.
(ii) Appropriateness. The next essential as far as character is concerned is that of
“appropriateness”. This term has also been interpreted variously. Once set of critics take it to
mean true to type. Yet this does not mean the Aristotle meant characters to be mere types and not
individuals. What he meant is that the characters should be true to their particular age,
profession, class, sex, or status.’ But they are^ individuals at the same time, for they are ‘men in
action’ as represented in tragedy.
The actions of people of the same type can, and do differ : in this lies their individuality. The
choice made .by them in the crucial situation indicates their particular individuality. Aristotle,
with his insistence that practice is the source of character, would have maintained that one who
has been brought up in slavery would not suddenly develop nobility and heroism. He would,
through the constant habit of doing the acts of a slave, become slave like. A woman, similarly ,
must be shown as ‘womanly’ and not manly. Each character should be given a character
appropriate to his ‘status’ or situation. Within each status; there remains the greatest freedom for
individuality in characterisation. In spite of restrictions and limitation, the individual may rise
above the tendency to run true to type. This involves dramatic treatment too.
Another aspect of appropriateness has been pointed o’ut by critics. Aristotle has not made it
clear as to what exactly the character is to be appropriate. It has been remarked th’at Aristotle
could have also meant that the character should be appropriate to the historical or traditional
portrait of him. For instance, Ulysses must be characterised as he has been historically presented.
Any character taken from myth or traditional story must be true to what he has been presented as
in that myth or story Apparently, if Aristotle meant this, he had the practice of the Greek
dramatists in mind who took their characters from traditional sources like myth and history. It is
thus that Clytemnestra cannot be represented as gentle, or Ulysses as foolish.
(iii) Likeness. The third essential .is that of likeness. Aristotle gives no example to illustrate
his meaning in this context. Thus it is slightly difficult to assess what exactly he means by the
term. If one interprets the term as likeness to the ‘original* in the sense of how the painter is true
to the original, it would mean being true to the personage in history, or legend. This would
curtail1 the freedom of the creative artist. It would be more acceptable to interpret the term as
“true to life”—that the character must be true to life. The likeness to life as we know of it is
necessary, for it is only then that we can identify ourselves with the characters. If we do not see
the character as we see ourselves, the tragic emotions of pity and fear become irrelevant. We see
that this likeness to life precludes the characters from being either too good or utterly depraved.
The tragic character has thus to be a normal person, or “of an intermediate sort”. Only then will
he be convincing.
One might argue here that Aristotle is contradicting himself, for he also says that tragedy
represents characters better than our selves. But this is not necessarily a contradiction. The action
of tragedy, we have been told, is a complete whole, has a coherent, well-knit, patterned unity—
and thus, has a more clearly defined end than a piece of real life or a slice of history. To fit such
an action, character must also be modified from the commonplace norm2 of real life. So, the
character is at one, true to life and different from reality as well. It is the balance on one hand
between our desire for reality and life like ‘imitation’ and on the other our desire for something
better than that found in real life.
(iv) Consistency. The fourth essential with regard to character
is that it must be consistent. This is a valid point which cannot be
disputed. The character must be seen as a whole, and consistent to
what he is presented as from beginning to end. There is to be
uniformity in behaviour unless there is a proper motivation for any
deviation. Any development in character has to take place according
to intelligible principles, i.e., logically. There has to be probability or
necessity in the character’s actions and words. Aristotle allows for
waywardness by saying that if the character is to be show as being
an inconsistent one, he should be consistently inconsistent. The
character, in other words, should act and seem to think in a manner
which we can logically expect from that particular individual. This is
similar to Aristotle’s contention of the plot being a causally related
whole. The character’s actions and words should be appropriate to
what he is represented to be, as well as to the situation in which he
is placed.

AN IDEAL TRAGIC HERO

The passage in the Poetics which deals with the ideal tragic hero, has attracted a great deal
of critical attention. Aristotle says : “It follows plainly, in the first place that the change of
fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to
adversity; for it moves the audience to neither fear nor pity : it simply shocks us. Nor, again, that
of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity, for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of
tragedy .
Nor, again should the downfall of an utter villain be exhibited.
A plot of this kind would, doubtless,, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither
pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of man like
ourselves.”
We see that Aristotle has no place in tragedy for two types of characters—the perfectly
virtuous and the thoroughly depraved or bad. Thus the tragic character is one who is not
eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice and depravity, but by
some error or frailty. He must also be one who is highly renowned and prosperous.

The Perfectly Good : Not Fit for a Tragic Hero

Aristotle’s concept of the effect of tragedy is that is arouses pity and fear in the spectator.
But a perfectly good man, if he suffers the fall from prosperity to misery, will not arouse pity or
fear; he would simply shock the spectator’s sense of justice. The shock arises from the fact that a
completely virtuous man is suffering; the suffering is wholly undeserved. It is an irrational
suffering.
The concept of the tragic hero not being perfect is related to the insistence on goodness in
character. For, a perfect person would be one who had his desires under control, and whose
intellect is able to form the right calculations and the right practical inferences, so that he would
formulate to himself ends more immediately within his power. Right action would become more
and more spontaneous and immediate, and the sphere of deliberation more and more limited.
And ultimately the scope for the dramatic display of action would not exist. A blameless,
virtuous character cannot be dramatically effective.. Furthermore, we cannot identify ourselves
with such a saintly character. It is true that in recent times Shaw and Eliot have made successful
drama with saints as their tragic heroes. But then Aristotle was speaking about the drama he
knew, i.e., the Greek drama. And generally speaking saints have been excluded from the sphere
of drama. Yet Antigone in Greek drama itself was quite blameless. She had to choose and chose
as well as possible in the circumstances; she sacrificed the lower duty to the higher.
One might say that blameless goodness is not the proper stuff for drama. Perfect goodness-
is apt to be immobile1 and uncombative2; it tends to bring action to a standstill. Yet it would not
be 1- not moving or changing. 2. not ready to fight or struggle.

It is completely right to say that the spectacle of a perfect man suffering shocks rather than
arouses pity. Desdemona, Cordelia, and Antigone surely arouse pity. It would not be correct to
say that terror, here, outweighs pity. The sense of outraged justice is there but it does not exclude
pity.

The Thoroughly Depraved Character : Not Suited for Tragedy

Another type of character excluded by Aristotle from the sphere of tragedy is that of the
utter villain. The completely bad man falling from prosperity to adversity1, says Aristotle, would
merely satisfy our sense of justice. There would be no pity or fear. The suffering is deserved, and
we cannot feel pity for the one who suffers . Furthermore, the sense of identification is absent,
just as it is in the case of the perfectly good man.
Nor can we tolerate the idea of bad man rising from adversity to prosperity. This would be
entirely alien to tragedy, says Aristotle. This is quite aceeptable. It would indeed offend our
sense of justice. Even the aesthetic2 effect would be one tinged with disquiet.
However, the exclusion of the villain from the sphere of tragedy is somewhat debatable. In
this Aristotle seems to show a limited vision. True, crime as crime has no place in dramatic art.
But presented in another light it becomes valid in drama. Macbeth outrages hospitality as well as
loyalty by killing his guest and king, Duncan, under his own roof. Webster’s Vittoria is a “white
devil’. But these peQple arouse pity. Vittoria standing undaunted before her enemies; Lady
Macbeth, alone, and broken by her sorrow and guilt; Macbeth courageously drawing his sword in
the face of certain defeat at Dunsidane,—all of them arouse pity though they are such Villains’.
Pity, as Lucas remarks, is not so narrow. It needs, however, the genius of Shakespeare to evolve
tragic villains of this type. Only he could perhaps create a Macbeth, or a Richard III.
There is something grand about these villains. It is wickedness on a grand level; the
wickedness is intellectual and resolute, and it raises the criminal above the commonplace and
gives to him a sort of dignity. There is something terrible in the spectacle of a will power
working out its evil course, dominating its surroundings. The fall and breakdown of such a
power evokes a certain tragic feeling in us, or a tragic sympathy. It is not the pity one feels for
the unmerited sufferer. But is a sense of loss and regret over the waste or misuse of such splendid
gifts. “Provided a person has some redeeming quality—courage, intellect, beauty, wit, passionate
devotion; provided they show some sort* of magnificence—then it is astonishing how much their
fellow-men can sometimes forgive them.” One might, perhaps, offer a defence’ of Aristotle,-here
too. After all, he says that a completelydepraved person is not fit to
 be a tragic hero. Macbeth, one could argue, is not completely depraved, for he shows
inordinate1 courage.

The Tragic Hero : An Intermediate Sort of Person

The person who stands between complete villainy and complete goodness, according to
Aristotle, is the ideal tragic hero. He is a. man like a ourselves, yet has a moral elevation. He is a
more intense person; his feelings are deeper, he has heightened powers of intellect and will. But
he is essentially human, so that it is easy for us to identify ourselves with him and sympathise
with him. Thus the tragic hero “must be an intermediate sort of person, a man not pre-eminently
virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought on him not be vice or depravity but by
some error of judgement, or Hamartia.”

Hamartia’ : Not A Moral Falling but an Error of Judgement

Hamartia has been interpreted variously. It has come to be rather loosely interpreted as
“tragic flaw’ by Bradley. This interpretation has stuck and has tended to confuse the true
meaning of the term. Hamartia is not a moral failing, as the term, tragic flaw implies. Aristotle
makes it clear that Hamartia is some error of judgement—that the fall of the hero comes about
not because of some depravity, but from some error on bis part. Critics like Butcher, Bywater,
Rostangi and Lucas agree that Hamartia is not a moral drawback. It may be connected with
moral drawback but it is not itself a moral imperfection.

Hamartia can Arise in Three Ways

The Hamartia is an error or miscalculation. It may arise in three ways. Firstly, it may be
derived from an ignorance of some material fact or circumstance. Secondly, the error of
judgement may arise from a hasty or careless view of a given situation. The case is illustrated
by Othello. In this case the error was avoidable but the hero does not avoid it. Thirdly, the error
may be voluntary, though not deliberate. This happens in an act of anger or passion. Lear
commits such an error when he banishes Cordelia.
In the case of Oedipus all three errors are included. The defect of Oedipus lies in his proud
self-assertion. But the ruin brought upon him is through the force of circumstance.
The Hamartia in his case includes a defect of character, a passionate act, and ignorance. The
tragic irony lies in the fact that the hero commits this error in blindness and in innocence, without
any evil intention. But the result is disastrous. This is closely connected with Peripitea, or the
production of a result opposed to the one intended. Then comes the discovery of
truth. In this connection Butcher remarks : “Othello in the modern
drama, Oedipus in the ancient, are the two most conspicuous examples
of ruin wrought by characters, noble indeed, but not without defects,
acting in the dark and, as it seemed, for the best.”
The Eminence of the Tragic Hero : Not Relevant in the Modern
 Context
Greek drama had for its heroes men of eminence and nobility. They held a position on
exaltation in society. When such a man falls from greatness to misery, a nation as a whole is
affected. The fall seems all the more striking because of the hero’s eminence. The concept was
acceptable and relevant in a situation in which prominent men of the nobility were held to be
representatives of the society. The concept is, however, outdated today.
Modern tragedy has shown that tragedy is possible all its effectiveness even when the hero is
ordinary and commonplace. Rank and nobility of birth are now irrelevant. But the man who is
the tragic hero should, nevertheless be a man of eminence, not of rank and position, as far as
quality goes. There has got to be some sort of dignity which makes the fall from prosperity
arouse sympathy in the spectator.

Conclusion
On the whole, we see that Aristotle’s concept of the tragic hero is not unacceptable. In some
ways he has a limited vision. Tragedy is possible .with saints, as Shaw and Eliot have shown.
But this is not a -generally found fact. That tragedy is also much possible with a villainous hero,
has been remarkably shown by the Renaissance dramatists, especially Shakespeare. Further, the
tragedy arises from Hamartia. This, too, is proved by many of our best tragedies, for these are
indeed what Lucas calls tragedies of error. It is the most effective of tragedies. However, the
chief limitation of Aristotle’s concept is that it is based on one section of world drama.
The tragic hero having all the characteristics mentioned above, has, in addition, a few more
attributes. In this context Aristotle begins by the following observation,

 A good man – coming to bad end. (Its shocking and disturbs faith)
 A bad man – coming to good end. (neither moving, nor moral)
 A bad man – coming to bad end. (moral, but not moving)
 A rather good man – coming to bad end. (an ideal situation)