Let's look to Aristotle for some basic characteristics of a tragic hero.
Characteristic #1 -- The tragic hero is of noble birth and seen as great by common people. This is true of Macbeth. He is not some common foot soldier. He is a military leader with a great big castle/house of his own complete with servants. Even King Duncan wants to come and see Macbeth and Macbeth's place. Kings don't do that for common plebeians.
Characteristic #2 -- The tragic hero has some kind of character flaw. This is often called "the tragic flaw." It makes the character more relatable because while the character is of great and noble birth, he's also flawed like the "rest of us." Macbeth's flaw is his ambition. I have ambition too, so I understand Macbeth's desire to be greater than he already is. Unfortunately for Macbeth, his ambition doesn't have an off switch. It's completely unbridled ambition. He is willing to kill to secure greater power, and he is willing to continue killing in order to keep his newly gotten power.
Characteristic #3 -- The hero's downfall is only partially his fault. This is also true of Macbeth, and it ties in with the tragic flaw. Macbeth can't help himself, because of his tragic flaw. He has unbridled ambition, which is much more dangerous than "normal" ambition. Additionally, I often think that if Lady Macbeth were not present, Macbeth might have been able to keep his ambitions in check. Unfortunately for Macbeth, his wife pushed her husband to the tipping point, and his desire for power took over from there.
Friday, January 26, 2018
What are 3 arguments as to why Macbeth is a tragic hero?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
No comments:
Post a Comment