...The Tragedy of Hamlet In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a great example of what a tragedy really is can be found. Throughout the play we see struggles, betrayals and many deaths. Hamlet definitely fits the genre of a tragedy in various ways. The play gives its audience a heart touching experience that makes the audience feel empathy for the characters. In order to have a true tragedy, there must be a tragic hero, along with a tragic flaw, and a catharsis. Below, one can learn what a tragedy is and how Hamlet fits this genre. In order to call Hamlet a tragedy one must know the meaning of tragedy. The Oxford English dictionary defines a tragedy as a serious play with an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character. Every tragedy should have a tragic hero. The tragic hero is often the protagonist in a play. The great philosopher Aristotle defines a tragic hero as a man of noble stature who is admired by society but flawed. The flaw in the hero is a key component to the play. It is often what makes or breaks the character. Many times the flaw in the character is what causes the turmoil. It is safe to say that every tragedy has a tragic hero and every tragic hero has a flaw. The imperfection in the character enables the audience to see eye to eye with the character. The audience is able to see that everybody has their imperfections. Just as our flaws can sometimes lead us into trouble, we can see how the protagonist has to face the same issues. ...
Words: 1015 - Pages: 5
...Perceiving Tragedy A tragedy is considered to be an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress. Arthur Miller's essay, 'Tragedy and the Common Man', contributes many different ideas on how he perceived tragedy. Trying to fulfil one's lives and personalities is usually how a tragic story happens. Hamlet tries to get revenge on Claudius when he find out what really happened to his father, starting his tragic story. He feels betrayed and is working hard to get his rightful position back. There is always the possibility that Hamlet is going to succeed in his mission. Tragedy is something that happens to everyone that is trying to fulfill themselves as a person, someone that is on a mission to get what they want. Hamlet starts with the plan of trying to get revenge on Claudius when he find out what the complete truth of what happened to his father. This is explained when he says, "As meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge." (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 30-31). He is a tragic hero, in which he goes on this mission of trying to get revenge for himself and his father, and ultimately succeeds, but then dies. He had a plan throughout the play, had many chances to fulfil the plan, but never went through with it. In Arthur Miller's essay, this is explained when he says "The tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing--his sense of personal dignity." (Miller, pg...
Words: 1088 - Pages: 5
...Hamartia in Oedipus the King According to the Aristotelian characteristics of good tragedy, the tragic character should not fall due to either excessive virtue or excessive wickedness, but due to what Aristotle called hamartia. Hamartia may be interpreted as either a flaw in character or an error in judgement. Oedipus, the tragic character in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, certainly makes several such mistakes; however, the pervasive pattern of his judgemental errors seems to indicate a basic character flaw that precipitates them. Oedipus’ character flaw is ego. This is made evident in the opening lines of the prologue when he states "Here I am myself--you all know me, the world knows my fame: I am Oedipus." (ll. 7-9) His conceit is the root cause of a number of related problems. Among these are recklessness, disrespect, and stubbornness. Oedipus displays an attitude of recklessness and disrespect throughout the play. When he makes his proclamation and no one confesses to the murder of Laius, Oedipus loses patience immediately and rushes into his curse. Later, he displays a short temper to Tiresias: "You, you scum of the earth . . . out with it, once and for all!," (ll. 381, 383) and "Enough! Such filth from him? Insufferable--what, still alive? Get out--faster, back where you came from--vanish!" (ll. 490-492) If an unwillingness to listen may be considered stubbornness, certainly Oedipus would take advice from no one who would tell him to drop the matter of his...
Words: 4487 - Pages: 18
...plays. Many know that Hamlet is about revenge, but Hamlet is also a tragedy. Arthur Miller in “Tragedy and the Common Man” concludes that the tragic hero does not have to be the king or a noble, but can be anyone as simple as the common man. Whereas Aristotle believed that they tragic hero is someone “Great”, usually someone in high power or regard. In Arthur Miller’s essay he states that the “common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were.” In a tragedy the tragic hero has a tragic flaw, which is his downfall. Arthur miller states, “ Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are flawless. Most of us are in that category”(Miller 1) Most people are passive when faced with a challenge that goes against them, that is what makes them flawless, but in a tragedy the character does go against the challenge, that is what makes it a tragic flaw. In Hamlet we see that it is not only the tragedy of Prince Hamlet but of others such as, Polonius, Ophelia and Laertes, caused by their tragic flaw Polonius is the chief counselor of Claudius’s court he is a very conniving person. Like many of the other characters in Hamlet he also has a tragic flaw. In Hamlet Polonius’s tragic flaw is his inability to keep to himself, which ultimately leads to his demise. An example of this is Act 2 scene 1 when Polonius tells Reynaldo to spy on Laertes. “Before you visit him, to make inquire of his behavior.”(2.1.4-5) While this may not be a quote...
Words: 1012 - Pages: 5
...era and the theatres were always crowded during a play. Shakespeare wrote mainly tragedies by the end of the 16th century, including Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth. Aristotle's definition of a tragedy is that a tragedy is an imitation (mimesis) of an action that is morally admirable. Aristotle is a philosopher who wrote about poetry, poetry being epic, drama, and lyric for Aristotle, in his work “Poetics”. He said in his work that a tragedy should be composed by an introduction, a middle part and an ending. According to Aristotle the fable (mythos) is more important than the characters in the play. It is so because the purpose with the tragedy, according to Aristotle, is to make the audience feel pity (eleos) and fear (fobos) and as a result achieve an emotional cleansing(Catharsis). In order to bring those feelings to the audience the tragedy must be complex. The tragedy must involve a peripeteia, meaning that a great person experiences a turning point, a reversal of fortune. This turning point must be caused by a mistake, the tragic hero's mistake (hamartia). This reversal of fortune cannot be prevented but it is an unforeseen result of the mistake the tragic hero makes. The tragic hero must during the play achieve a revelation(anagnorisis) that means that the hero will go from not knowing to knowing, and that could be about anything. All these elements are what makes a tragedy a good tragedy according to Aristotle. In 1963 Gustav Freytag, a...
Words: 1243 - Pages: 5
...In his essay “Tragedy and the Common Man” Arthur Miller attempts to redefine both the genre of tragedy and the tragic hero. According to Miller, a tragedy is defined as a man wrestling with how he defines himself in regards to his environment, and that above all, Miller believes that tragedies should be optimistic. Miller states that the “wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity… Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly”. Miller is saying that all tragedies stem from an attack on the main characters dignity, and all tragedies are therefore a result of a man’s attempt to make sense of who he is after having been shamed. By using the word inevitable, Miller seems to...
Words: 1507 - Pages: 7
...developed a stimulating effect on English education around the globe. This has created a lasting effect on people and it’s uncommon to not have a familiarity with Greek tragedies. Most people do not take the time to think about the elements that make them tragedies or make the characters in them tragic heroes. In one of the “earliest surviving works of dramatic theory” of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, he laid out his rules for what is the foundation of a tragedy and a tragic hero. In the play by Sophocles, Oedipus stands out as a classic representation of what a tragedy hero is. Oedipus the book has key aspects that Aristotle said to make a tragedy and a tragic hero. One of the requirements for being a tragic hero according to Aristotle is "a [great] man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake." There must be some mistake made by the character flaw that causes the great man’s fortunes to turn for the worst. Aristotle felt that there were certain plot devices that needed to take place in order for it to qualify as a tragedy and for the character to really be a tragic hero. Without a tragic hero there cannot be a tragedy happening, plot is a very important point. The plot of a true tragedy should be complex and consist of reversal and recognition. Both of these plot elements are contained within the play Oedipus the King. The play starts out highlighting...
Words: 1625 - Pages: 7
...taught to make connections with the protagonist first and the other characters were just insignificant, being only used to give more emphasis on the protagonist. It now comes a time as adults to explore all aspects of all the characters and not just single one out. This is especially true when reading tragedies. In tragedies people are also so quick to think that the main character is the one that has suffered the most or is the “tragic hero”. The tragic play Ghosts is an excellent example of this premature thinking. Readers are constantly thinking that Mrs. Alving is living a tragedy, but in actuality the tragedy falls upon the two children Regina and Oswald. From the work of Richard Sewall’s “The Vision of Tragedy”, we can conclude that classifying Mrs. Alving as the tragic hero is inaccurate because of her actions in the story and how those actions affect others. As we soon discover, the life of Mrs. Alving is pretty rough. Her husband was a habitual cheater and was almost completely absent when the two had the responsibility to raise their son Oswald. Having nowhere else to turn, Mrs. Alving decided to try to seek refuge in the family pastor, Mr. Manders. Unfortunately, his solution was for her to continue to do her duties as a mother and wife to bring her husband back to her. He tells her “No! we must do our duty, Mrs. Alving. And your duty was to cleave to the man you had chosen and to whom you were bound by a sacred bond” (19). And that's exactly what she did...
Words: 905 - Pages: 4
...When the Tragic Hero Falls There are lots of tragedies happening all around us, whether it be a catastrophic incident or something as simple as dropping that last piece of cake, each of us have different ways of viewing tragedies. The two tragedies, Oedipus Rex and Death of a Salesman examine tragedies very differently. Oedipus Rex is about a king who uncovers his horrific backstory, that he has killed his father and married his mother. Knowing this information, it begins to demolish his state of reality. It caused him to go from an extremely high peak, honored king, to a terribly low peak, resented human. In Death of a Salesman, a average American man named Willy Loman spirals into further insanity because he cannot reach his deceitful dream....
Words: 591 - Pages: 3
...consider tragedy a relevant genre for the modern age? According to Miller there are very few tragedies written in the modern age, this is because of the rareness of heroes among us. Miller believes that the ‘Modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the scepticism of science’. What Miller is meaning by this is that today the society is reserved and is unwilling to take risks resulting in very few tragedies being written. Miller concludes by saying that he believes that tragedies are seen as old fashioned in today’s society, he also believes that tragedies were only suitable for the ‘very highly placed’ such as the kings or kingly. Who does Miller think is a suitable subject for tragedy and how does he support his claim? Miller claims that the common man is a suitable subject for a tragedy meaning the masses or the working class. Miller supports his claim by saying that modern psychiatry does in fact base its analysis upon classic formulations, for example the Oedipus where he kills his father and Orestes which is the tragedy where he kills his mother and her lover to avenge his father’s murder. However even though these tragedies were acted by royal individuals; these similar emotional situations apply to everyone. So in other words the common man would be a suitable subject for a tragedy as the common man is likely to experience similar emotional situations. According to Miller what is it about the tragic figure which interests us? The tragic figure...
Words: 1087 - Pages: 5
...Willy and Oedipus Tragedy Essay Oedipus is a play by Sophocles about a man who saves a town from a sphinx, becomes king,weds with his mother, and kills his father. His whole path is driven by fate. Death of a Salesman is a drama by Arthur Miller about a salesman named Willy Loman who has this big dream to be successful. He ends up failing and commits suicide. Both Oedipus and Willy are exquisite tragic figures, but Willy is superior because he has a higher relation to the audience, had a chance to make it, and Oedipus had no control over what happened to him. Aristotle and Arthur Miller had very different views on what a tragedy entaled. Aristotle thought that a tragedy must start out great, but end in a tragedy. It must have magnitude and...
Words: 840 - Pages: 4
...The Tragedy of Hamlet A tragedy can be defined as a literary work in which the main character or characters suffer extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavourable circumstances. William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is a well known play that falls under the genre of a tragedy because it’s very dramatic, contains numerous murders and has an overall suspenseful atmosphere throughout the play. Hamlet follows the elements of a classic Shakespearean tragedy such as the tragic hero, a tragic flaw, and a tragic story. Hamlet is the quintessential tragic hero, he begins with good intentions but by the end he does not survive to see the full outcome of his actions. Hamlet possesses positive traits and demonstrates those traits throughout the play but Hamlet was incapable of defeating his own greatest flaw, his inability to take action which led to the demise of not only himself, but many around him. The third element is the tragic story, which leads up to and results in the death of the hero, the suffering that usually befalls the hero is unusual and disastrous. Hamlet follows all elements of a classic Shakespearean tragedy with Hamlet as the tragic hero, his tragic flaw, and the tragic story that results in death. Tragic heroes often begin at a high position of nobility, as Hamlet is the prince of Denmark; he has a lofty position to fall from. When he is first introduced in Act 1 Scene 2, He is a young prince who...
Words: 1126 - Pages: 5
...A Shakespearean Tragedy Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is an all time favorite by many people in the world, it is and timeless classic tragedy for over four hundred years. It contains the six tragic elements, such as a tragic hero with a tragic flaw, external and internal conflicts; last but not least, it contains revenge. These elements are what make “Romeo and Juliet” a true Shakespearean tragedy. A tragic hero with a tragic flaw is a noble figure and a leader whose death or downfall affects the plot of the story. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is the tragic hero with a tragic flaw. Romeo Montague’s flaw is that he falls in love to swiftly. For example, he’s in love with Rosaline, but she does not love him back. He attends the Capulet’s mask party, and falls in love at first sight of Juliet. Romeo say’s to himself “or I ne’er saw true beauty” (Act 1, scene 5) and wants to marry her immediately. Another flaw that Romeo acquires is that he reacts too quickly. In many of the acts, you will always see him reacting to something so soon. If Romeo was not included in this play, it would take away the universal theme, which is the message that occurs. Moreover, it would take away the suspense; the uncertain events and chance happenings in this classic tragedy. An internal conflict is within a character and him or her. In act 2, scene 2 where Romeo states ”shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?” he is contemplating if he should just listen to Juliet’s thoughts about him...
Words: 566 - Pages: 3
...what is political in drama in classical athens? The politics of greek tragedy ⁃ poets are considered as teachers (2) ⁃ good poetry could save the city, bad poetry could destroy it (4) ⁃ addressed towards the citizens of athens ⁃ political would be refereed as concern with human beings as part of a community according to Macleod (64) ⁃ A tragedy can thus be said to be more political the more it's male characters are engaged in the public life of the city. same goes for women ⁃ tragedies can be political in different ways ⁃ exercise of political power is one way which puts the head of the household of having power (example of this is on page 69) ⁃ issues of justice, is another form of different tragedies. judicial authority of court laws come into play. ⁃ Third different form of political drama is the life of the polis on a more personal level for its original audience members. Tragedy was understood to teach greeks to be good citizens. There are a few problems that derive from this. Free-born men in tragedies are usually kings and princes, Tragic heroes are heroic and elevated in character and they usually suffer from dreadful acts. ⁃ Lessons that are learned from tragic heroes are not to follow in their path because they do die. ⁃ any attempt to separate the domestic and the political in tragedy must be artificial (71) ⁃ the polis can be defined as both as a physical space and as the sum of its citizens (73) ⁃ the use of tragic space reflects the popular...
Words: 749 - Pages: 3
...Arthur Miller wrote his essay titled “Tragedy and the Common Man” in 1949. This essay explains Miller’s definition of a tragic hero as well as why a common man has as much ability to be the hero of a tragedy as someone of nobility. The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller in 1953 that dramatizes the Salem witch trials of the late seventeenth century in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the play, the town of Salem falls into hysteria after Reverend Parris finds his daughter, niece, and their friends dancing in the woods with his slave Tituba. The young girls claim they have been bewitched by people in the town to avoid punishment, although, the punishment then comes for the accused regardless of their innocence. A vital character to the...
Words: 948 - Pages: 4
