Assignment Paper-3

Topic-Tragic Hero

Ashvin p. Dabhi

Roll No – 11

SEM – I

Batch-2010-11

Submitted to Mr. Dilip Barad

Department of English,

Bhavnagar University.

Ø Introduction:-

                   Tragic hero is all conspicuous persons who “stand in a high degree. Thus Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are all conspicuous persons. They are either kings or princes, or great. So Hamlet is a prince, Lear is a king Macbeth belongs to the royal family and is a great warrior and brave general. Shakespeare’s conception of tragedy is medieval for he is not concerned with the fate of the common man, with his sorrows and suffering, which is concern of a modern tragedy. The hero is such an important personality that his fall reflects the welfare of a whole nation or empire, and when he falls suddenly from the height of earthly greatness to the dust, his fall produces a sense of the powerlessness of man and the omnipotence of fate. The tragic hero is not only a person of high degree; he also has an exceptional nature. He is built on a grand scale. He has some passion or obsession which attains in him a terrible force he has a marked one-sidedness, a strong tendency to act in a particular way. Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are all driven in some one direction by some peculiar interest, object, passion or habit of mind. Bradley refers to this trait as the tragic flaw. Thus Macbeth has ‘valuating ambition’; Hamlet, ‘noble inaction’, Othello credulity and rashness in action, and Lear the folly and fondness of old age. He is passionate and lacks in self control owing to the fault or flaw of his character the tragic hero falls from greatness. He errs and his error, joining with other cause, brings ruin upon him. In other words, his character issues in action or action issues out of his character. It is in this sense that, character is Destiny, is true of a Shakespearean tragedy. The character of hero is responsible for his actions, and from this point of view they appear to be instruments shaping their own destiny.

           

        As Bardly puts it,

                 “The calamities and catastrophe follow inevitably from the deeds of men, and the main source of these deeds is character.”

                    Let’s discuss about the features of tragic hero with special reference of Hamlet’s tragic hero.

Ø The mental suffering of the hero and his death:-

                    A Shakespearean tragedy has been defined as a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man occupying a high position or status. A tragedy by Shakespeare is concerned chiefly with one man, and is a tale of suffering and misfortunes leading to that man’s death and of the deaths of a few others also. The hero must be a man holding a lofty position and commanding respect and the suffering or misfortunes must be of an extraordinary kind so as to produce string tragic feelings, especially the feeling of pity, awe and terror. Hamlet is primarily and chiefly the tragedy of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark. Hamlet was a well-know, honored and well-beloved figure in the political life of Denmark of the time at which the incidents of the play are supposed to have taken place. The play depicts the mental suffering and torture which Hamlet endures as a result of what he rightly considers to be the shameless conduct of his mother in getting married two months of the death of her first husband, and in having married this time a man who is in every respect inferior to her first husband. Hamlet’s distress over the conduct of his mother is clearly reflected in his very first soliloquy in which he says that the whole routine of life has now begun to seem to him to be “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. It is the conduct of his mother which leads him to the following generalization: “frailty, the name is woman.” hamlet’s mental suffering is makes to him and by the task which the ghost imposes on him. Hamlet subsequently undergoes even greater mental suffering because he finds himself unable to avenge the murder of his father promptly on account of a temperamental draw-back, and ultimately he dies as a result of the wound which is inflicted on him by Laertes with a poisoned dagger, but before dying he stabs the murderer of his father and thus at last takes his revenge. Besides Hamlet and the king, others who die in this play are Polonius, ophella, the queen and Laertes.

Ø A defect in the tragic hero’s character:-

                        The suffering and calamities which lead to the final disaster in a Shakespearean tragedy are not merely sent from above; nor do they happen by pure accident. These calamities and suffering result chiefly from the actions and characters of those concerned. Not character alone, but character chiefly, is responsible for the suffering and the tragedy. The tragedy of Hamlet is due mainly to a defect in his own character. This defect is his incapacity for quick decisions and for action. He is certainly capable of impulsive action but he is not of planned or premeditated action. The result is that he goes on delaying his revenge till ultimately the initiative is taken by his enemy against him. Hamlet is by nature given to reflection and meditation. He thinks too much. Although, after the disclosure by the ghost, Hamlet resolves to avenge the murder of his father, he goes on waiting till it occurs to him that he should verify the truth of what the ghost has told him. And so he arranges a play which he calls “Mouse- trap.” But even after he has made sure that the king is guilty. Hamlet does not proceed to take his revenge the contrary, even when he gets an excellent opportunity to kill Claudius, he spares him on the strange ground that the king is at prayer and that, if killed now, and he would go straight to heaven. This postponement of his revenge, this irresolution, this shrinking from what he has already called his duty, constitutes a serious flaw in his character.

Ø Conflict in the mind of the tragic hero:-

                        Conflict is essential to every drama, and it is to be found in abundant measure in a Shakespearean tragedy. This conflict is of two kinds: there is the outward conflict between the characters; and there is the inner conflict which tales place in the mind of the hero. In Hamlet the outward conflict takes place between Hamlet and Claudius. While Claudius seeks to get rid of Hamlet in order to ensure his own security and stability. Towards the end of the play an outward conflict also takes place between Hamlet and Laertes, because Laertes is seeking revenge for the murder of his own father who has been killed by Hamlet. The inner conflict is revealed to us in Hamlet’s successive soliloquies. Almost every soliloquy by Hamlet contains a mental debate. The most famous of these soliloquies is the one which begin thus: “to be or not to be, that is the question. The debate here is perhaps the most agonizing which Hamlet goes through. An inner conflict appears also very poignantly in the soliloquy which begins thus: “How all occasions do inform again me!” in this failure to avenge the murder so his father is due to an element of cowardice in his nature. He feels greatly distressed by the thought that he has not lived up to his own notion of honor which demanded that he should put an end to the life of his father’s murdered.

Ø The greatness of the tragic hero:-

                 A tragic hero is built by Shakespeare on a ground scale. A Shakespearean of character is intellectual genius, or strength of character or intellectual genius, or an immense force which excites our admiration and our sympathy for him in spite of the defect or the flaw which he suffers from. Hamlet is a man of intellectual genius; he has a high sense of honor; his heart is full of devotion to his dead father; and he has a noble mind. These qualities win him our admiration and sympathy in spite of his lack of a capacity for quick action and his tendency to procrastination. Now, the greatness of a tragic hero in Shakespeare has two results. Since the tragic hero is represented as noble and morally great, the effect of a Shakespearean tragedy is never depressing. A Shakespearean tragedy gives us the feeling that man is not mean or wretched, though he may be a victim of suffering and misfortune. A Shakespearean tragedy does not therefore leave us in a cynical or desperate mood. Secondly, greatness perishing or getting destroyed fills us with a sense of waste. Both these result are to be seen in the case of Hamlet. Here the noble character of Hamlet creates in us an awareness of the essential dignity and, a feeling of waste is aroused in us when we witness that the nobility and greatness of Hamlet come to nothing and when we realize what immense good he could have done to his country under different circumstances.

Ø The development in the character of the tragic hero:-

         In a tragedy the tragic hero generally comes to the realization of a truth of which he had previously been unaware. There is as Aristotle says a change from ignorance to knowledge. But in ancient Greek tragedy this change was little more than the clearly up of a mistaken identify. Not so with the tragedy of Shakespeare. In Hamlet and King Lear, for instance, there is a transformation in character of the hero. Towards the close of the play, Lear is the opposite of what he had been at the beginning. He has been purged of his arrogance and pride. When we first meet Hamlet, he is in a state of deep depression. The world seems to him an “unwanted garden” from which he would willingly depart. He has found corruption not only in Denmark but in existence itself. We soon learn that he had not always been so, Ophelia tells us that he had been the ideal Renaissance prince- a combination of the soldier, the scholar, the courtier etc; and though we catch glimpses of his former personality though his conversations with Horatio, his state of depression continues and is in fact, aggravated. However by the final scene, his composure has returned. He no longer appears in slovenly dress, he apologizes to Laertes, and he treats Claudius with courtesy up to the point at which Gertrude’s death reveals the king’s treachery and compels him to the act of vegenace.

Ø The transformation in the tragic hero:-

             In each of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies Hamlet, the hero is transformed into something which he had not been at the beginning of the play. At the end of Hamlet, the hero is very different from the man who had earlier longed for death and contemplated suicide. There is no more fighting in his soul. The movement toward Hamlet’s regeneration began with his reflections on the actor’s speech about Hecuba. This movement advanced further in the scene between Hamlet and his mother, and this movement reaches its climax in the grave-diggers’ scene is essentially a meditation on the inevitability of death. This scene begins lightheartedly but it becomes steadily more serious and more general. Hamlet’s reflections on the skulls thrown up by the grave-digger in the course of his digging contain very interesting and very philosophical ideas. Hamlet recalls the sparkling wit and excellent fancy of the court jester, Yorick. He asks where yorick’s gibes, gambols and songs are now and he would like the young lady in her chamber to be informed that she would meet the same sad fate no matter how thickly she paints her cheeks. Earlier, Hamlet has commented on a skull which could be the skull of a politician or of a courtier or of a lawyer, and he has further speculated that the dust of Alexander and Caesar might be serving to stop a hole in a barrel or on the skulls and the bones are his last comment on the difference between appearance and reality. He has come to accept reality for what it is. It is after the graveyard scene that the man who had continually brooded on death is able to face it.

Ø Tragic hero- The victim of circumstances:-

                  Tragic hero is essentially the victim of circumstances, and these very circumstances bring to failure one from whom much could have been accepted. For, sworn to the duty of wreaking vengeance of his father’s murderer, the young prince is confronted with a task essentially foreign to his nature and destined to bring out in him all of the weaker, and but few of the stronger, traits in his character. Grief at his father’s passing has brought melancholy to one who is normally of cheerful, although quiet, disposition. Realization of the wretched scheming which brought about the death of the king and the new responsibility which the charge of the ghost laid upon him, complete the transformation in Hamlet. As his melancholy deepens, so do we see marked charges in the character of the prince? His deep thinking mind reflects on the futility of life, and he contemplates suicide, his former sparkling wit gives place to bitterness and sarcam, he becomes cunning and cruel, determined to outwit rogues by beating them at their own game. He consistently peppers what he says with double meanings which if they strike home will hurt as they are designed to do.

Ø Tragic flaw in the hero:-

                         It is chiefly character that is responsible for the tragic fate of the hero, but a Shakespearean tragedy also arouses a feeling that there is a mysterious power in this universe that we may call fate or destiny or providence that operates in the universe and is responsible for the manner in which things take shape. In the case of the play of Hamlet, there is no doubt that the tragedy of the prince is due to chiefly to a fault in his own character. There is in him what may be called a tragic flaw. Hamlet is by nature a reflective type of man very much given to philosophic speculations. He is not by nature a man of action, though he certain performs, certain actions on the spur of the moment whenever he acts, he acts on impulse only. He incapable of formulating a bold plan of action and executing it. In other words, he is capable of planned of premeditated action. This is the reason why he is not able to accomplish the task that has been imposed upon him by the ghost. He very much wants to avenge the murder of his father but he goes on delaying his revenge of a man whom he should have killed long before. This tendency to procrastination, constitute a serious defect of character which eventually leads to the tragedy of Hamlet.

Ø Conclusion:-

                  Aristotle says that the ideal tragic hero must be an intermediate kind of person a man not virtuous and just yet whose misfortune is brought upon him not by vice or depravity but some error of Judgment.