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Hamlet Tragic Hero Research Paper

Decent Essays

Matt Howe
Mr. Casey
Hamlet tragic hero
30, March 2018

Hamlet as a Tragic Hero According to Aristotle, a tragic hero must have tragic flaws in their character or judgment that leads him to his own downfall or death. In shakespeare's play Hamlet, there are many tragic flaws in the main character such as Hamlet's indecisiveness, and excessive concern with death. A tragic hero is defined as “a literary character who makes a judgment error that leads to that characters own downfall”. Throughout the history of literature, characters such as Hamlet and Jay Gatsby and Romeo have fit this role perfectly. Aristotle once said “A man doesn't become a tragic hero until he can see the root of his own downfall. These characters and people couldn't see …show more content…

Gatsby has endless wealth, power and influence but is never selfish with any of it. Everything he owns exists only to attain his vision. Gatsby's tragic flaw lies within his inability to see that the real and the ideal cannot coexist. Gatsby ideal is Daisy. He sees her as the “perfect human being”. He believes she is worthy of all his money and affection when In reality she is undeserving through her actions throughout the book, she shows the reader she is pathetic rather than honorable in my opinion. When Daisy says "Sophisticated-God I am sophisticated”, she contradicts herself and the reader sees the irony in this, knowing she is far from subtle, superficial, ungenerous and pathetic. Gatsby's vision relies on his belief that the past can be repeated, Gatsby's disregard to reality creates his dream of making enough money to be with Daisy. Gatsby believes staying young and winning her back for a second try could happen if only he had enough money. Gatsby being too generous and letting people walk over him to get what they want was in my opinion this characters downfall. Gatsby and Hamlet are much alike. Hamlet goes through this same thing with Ophelia. In the beginning of the play you see Hamlet has history with Ophelia. He claims he loves her but with trying to avenge his father's death and everyone thinking he’s going mad he didn't get anywhere and it ended up driving Ophelia mad as

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