Marco physically resembles the Sicilian stereotype, He is also very strong and he could easily "load the whole ship by himself." In this play, the author uses plot, dialog, actions and symbolism to emphasize Marco's honor, his prominent characteristic. But the fact that Marco left his family to give them support and to save his oldest son who is "sick in the chest," makesthe reader forget about his illegal stay and makes his status rise to the one of a male protagonist. In this play, Marco's actions lead us to the discovery of a violent side which he uses to defend his honor and respect in a number of occasions. For example, when he challenges Eddie at the end of the first act, we understand that he did it to save his brother's face and his family's honor.
He is happy to commit murder if that was to be the end of it but he fears the consequences and is concerned that the same fate will befall him, “Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventor”. He is moral man, loyal to the King who has recently honoured him. Macbeth tells himself that he cannot escape the consequences of assassinating Duncan yet ‘only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself And falls on the other”. This suggests that his own motivation is ambition, which he understands makes people rush ahead of themselves and ends in a downfall. This is a prophetic reflection of the final denouement of the play.
Hamlet then seeks revenge. Hamlet is a reasonable man who struggles with the loss of his father and slowly spirals down a dark path toward madness. People can relate to his disturbed character, this is what makes him an enthralling character to analyze. In act 1, you have a reasonable man who is grieving over the loss of his father. Given the circumstances, it is reasonable Hamlet takes the dark path.
How does Shakespeare’s portrayal of Emilia affect the response of the audience to the final act of ‘Othello’? Shakespeare’s Othello shows the downfall of the eponymous hero: a downfall which is the consequence of his trust in a friend and a sexual jealously which has its roots in insecurity. Emilia is a minor character in the play yet it is she who makes a major contribution, apparently unconsciously, to Othello’s fall. The two characters seem to follow opposite paths in the play. Emilia is strictly controlled by her husband Iago but at the end of the play she cannot be silenced and she earns the audience’s admiration.
Using Oedipus as an ideal model, Aristotle says that a tragic hero must be an important or influential man who makes an error in judgment, and who must then suffer the consequences of his actions. Those actions are seen when Oedipus forces Teiresias to reveal his destiny and his father's name. When Teiresias tries to warn him by saying I say that you and your most dearly loved are wrapped together in a hideous sin, blind to the horror of it (Sophocles 428). Oedipus still does not care and proceeds with his questioning as if he did not understand what Teiresias was talking about. The tragic hero must learn a lesson from his errors in judgment and become an example to the audience of what happens when great men fall from their social or political positions.
One sees from the very beginning that he is a very complex and conflicted man, and that his tragedy has already begun. Hamlet is considered to be a tragic hero because he has a tragic flaw, that in the end, is the cause of his downfall. As defined by Aristotle, a tragic play has a beginning, middle, and end; unity of time and place; a tragic hero; and the concept of catharsis. One of the main reasons this play is considered a tragic play is because the main character is a tragic hero. Hamlet's tragic flaw is he spends too much time thinking and not enough time acting.
When in fact, he is made a fool by his own actions. Aristotle created the many requirements of a tragic hero, all of which Romeo possesses. He has both a hamartia and a tragic flaw; these are what truly cause the tragic ending to Romeo’s life. He had many miscalculations within the play, the most important of which is putting his trust in Balthasar and assuming Juliet to be dead. While that may have been the final contribution to his death, his tragic flaw is what is shown throughout the play.
A tragic hero is a character who makes an error of judgment that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on a tragedy. In addition, this character is happy at the beginning of the play. A tragic hero must be of noble birth and demonstrate a tragic flaw throughout the story. This character will realize their flaw once it is too late to overcome the conflict. In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Marcus Brutus exhibits qualities that make him the tragic character.
According to Brown, “The dramatist depicts incidents which arouse pity and fear for the protagonist [Antigone], then during the course of the action, he resolves the major conflicts, bringing the plot to a logic and foreseeable conclusion (Brown, para 5). The tragic hero in Antigone is Creon. Tragic heroes are not all good and not all bad. Creon suffers a great deal due to his tragic flaw and destructive pride. Creon believes the gods make him suffer the loss of his wife and son as punishment for his pride.
Character Flaws Oedipus the King and Death of a Salesman two plays depicting the inability of the main characters to accept the reality of their situation, often times using excuses or delusions to protect themselves from danger. In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus finds himself blind to the truth of his life, and his family origin. Arthur Miller’s play, The Death of a Salesman, narrates the story of a tragic character so captivated in his false belief that reality and illusion merge, resulting in an internal struggle that leads to his downfall. Each play represents the internal battle of a man struggling to come to terms with his own, bitter reality and departing from his fantasy world. In selecting the frailty of illusion over the constancy of reality, the protagonists meet their inevitable disaster.