Hamlet as a Tragic Hero

• Noble Birth

a great or virtuous character in a dramatic tragedy who is destined for downfall, suffering, or defeat:Oedipus, the classic tragic hero.

Aristotle shared his view of what makes a tragic hero in his Poetics:

 Aristotle suggests that a hero of a tragedy must evoke in the audience a sense of pity or fear, saying, “the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity."^[1] 

• Dispossessed prince

He establishes the concept that the emotion of pity stems not from a person becoming better but when a person receives undeserved misfortune and fear comes when the misfortune befalls a man like us. 

• Now a commoner not a king
• universal grief

This is why Aristotle points out the simple fact that, “The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad.” According to Aristotle a tragic hero ought to be a man whose misfortune comes to him, not through vice or depravity but by some error of judgment. For example King Oedipus kills his father from impulse and marries his mother out of ignorance.

• Hamlet killing polonious rash

Aristotle contests that the tragic hero has to be a man “who is not eminently good and just, whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.” He is not making the hero entirely good in which he can do no wrong but rather has the hero committing an injury or a great wrong leading to his misfortune. Aristotle is not contradicting himself saying that the hero has to be virtuous and yet not eminently good. Being eminently good is a moral specification to the fact that he is virtuous.^[2] He still has to be - to some degree - good. 

• Hamlet good?

Aristotle adds another qualification to that of being virtuous but not entirely good when he says, “He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous.” 

a literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on a tragedy

A tragic hero is a person of noble birth with heroic or potentially heroic qualities.

This person is fated by the Gods or by some supernatural force to doom and destruction or at least to great suffering.

• 'o cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right'

But the hero struggles mightly against this fate and this cosmic conflict wins our admiration.

This tragic drama involves choices (free will) and results in a paradox --- Is it Fate or Free Will which is primarily responsible for the suffering in the hero's life (and in our lives in light of our own personal tragedies)? Though fated the hero makes choices which bring about his destruction.

In addition, tragic drama usually reveals the hero's true identity. Oedipus --- instead of being the proud savior of Thebes --- discovers that he is the cause of the city's plague, the killer of his father and the husband of his mother.

The hero's suffering, however, is not gratuitous because through great suffering the hero is enlightened. Such heroes learn about themselves and their place in the universe. Pride is chastened. Though destroyed the hero is at peace intellectually.

Tragic doom is both public (the State) and private (a family tragedy as well) and usually sexual transgressions are involved in some way.