The definition of a traditional ‘tragic hero’ originated in Aristotle’s work ‘Poetics’ where he suggests that a hero of a tragedy must evoke a sense of dread from the audience due to their own misfortune; a sense of catharsis, purging the emotions of an audience through art (Merriam-Webster's encyclopaedia of literature, 1995). The change of said fortune "should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad.” (Butcher, Aristotle. and Aristotle., 1902) From this formula therefore, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is essentially the perfect tragic hero in the sense that he begins the play with the just intentions of avenging his father’s death using his own theatrical creativity, but by the end of the play where he decides to finally commit suicide after all the deeds he has done. This contrasts with the character Hamm from ‘Endgame’ who tries to become a tragic hero much like Hamlet yet fails in this plan as he cannot evoke the same catharsis as Hamlet can, arguably because o...
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