| Submitted by: | effervescence |
| Date: | 02 / 01 / 2009 |
| Category: | English Literature |
| Words | Pages: | 1481 | 6 |
| Views: | 118 |
A tragic hero is (predictably) the character around which a tragedy revolves. The purpose of a tragedy is to arouse “pity and fear” in the audience, and in order for the tragic hero to arouse these feelings, he cannot be entirely good or entirely evil; he must be someone the audience can identify with, and thus he hovers somewhere in between good and bad, tugged one way and then pulled toward the other.
Although the audience should be able to resonate with the hero, he is often elevated to a position of authority or leadership. If he is superior to those around him in some way, he will have a longer way to fall: his downfall is more dramatic and the pleasure aroused in the audience by his tragic ending is therefore intensified. Thus, the tragic hero is often a character of nobility, the leader of a certain community.
The tragedy unfolds when the tragic hero makes an error of judgment due to a flaw in his nature—a fatal flaw. His downfall will be the product of his own mistakes (and not of his quintessential goodness or evil). The hero’s downfall is therefore his or her own fault. This fatal error of judgment normally stems from “hubris”, which means an excessive arrogance or pride. The hero’s characteristically catastrophic ending, however, is not wholly deserved. More often than not, the punishment exceeds the crime. In addition, the catastrophe to which the hero’s flaw leads is never purely a loss. The hero also gains an increase in self-awareness, or in self-knowledge.
In this paper, I will use Christopher Marlowe’s version of Doctor Faustus to examine the concept of the “tragic hero”.
Doctor Faustus is a classic German legend, and the basis of hundreds of literary, artistic and musical works, including those by Christopher Marlowe, Franz Liszt, Terry Pratchett and Oscar Wilde. It tells the story of Faustus, a doctor of great wisdom and ability, who strikes a deal with the Devil: he is allotted twenty-four years of life with absolute power and...
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