Much Ado About Nothing Don John Character Flaws

Tragic Flaws. What are they? Well, tragic flaws are what bring a character down, due to their personality traits and decisions, and there were many of them in the hilarious comedy written by William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, but who was the most tragically flawed character in the play? Due to his determination to extract revenge and his extreme jealousy, Don John is the character who was most tragically flawed out of all characters in the play Much Ado About Nothing.

To start off, Don John had a major character flaw, and that consisted of jealousy of his brother. In the novel, it is stated how Don John had been defeated in a battle by Don Pedro, which was caused due to his disagreements with his brother, as described in The Outsider

These conditions that Don John has been through, has been very unfair to him, and due to these, he was formed into the person he is today. He carried so much hatred and pain due to what he had been forced through, and that seemed to have formed jealousy. Similar things have happened in our lives, causing us to change into a different person who we never would have been if not for the circumstances that we’ve faced. Think about different people out there in the world. So many people have turned towards payback and hurting people, due to them being inferior to someone, being betrayed by their best friend, or even someone getting a better grade than them. Likewise, Don John has turned this way. Using this jealousy that has formed inside him, it eventually led onto his determination to get revenge on his brother, Don Pedro. In Act 1, Scene 3, Don John says, “Let us go to the great supper. Their cheer is

As the story goes on, Don John gets more determined to bring down his brother, and he succeeds in doing so halfway through the book, as shown in, “Not to be married, / Not to knit my soul to an approved wanton… I stand dishonour’d, that have gone about…” (Shakespeare 66-67). In this piece of text, Claudio is confronting Hero of “cheating on him”, and this hurts Don Pedro’s reputation, because he was the one who brought Hero and Claudio together and seeing that one of his close friend’s daughter betray his trust, it damaged Don Pedro’s reputation. Now, it may seem that Don John is having all that he wants, and that he really isn’t that tragically flawed, but this victory leads onto worse circumstances for him, than how it would have been for him if he did not have these flawed traits. At the end of the book, in Act 5, Scene 4, the Messenger arrives saying, “My lord, your brother John is ta’en in flight, / And brought your armed men back to Messina,” (Shakespeare) with Benedick replying back, “I’ll devise thee brave/ punishments for him.” (Shakespeare). This shows how badly things ended for Don John. He was so stubborn to hurt his brother’s status, that he himself ended up getting hurt. His plans and schemes worked for awhile, but eventually karma got him back, and his plan backfired, bringing him to his downfall. Due to his determination to get revenge on his