Hamlet Tragic Hero Essay

Tragic heroes represent a more realistic approach at the classic hero tales. The original hero’s tale involves a perfect super human saving the day and fighting for justice like Beowulf. The underlying trait of a tragic hero is his tragic flaw that makes him more relatable to the audience and often allows him to demonstrate that downsides of a certain negative quality or overall negative idea of society. Shakespeare uses tragic heroes to display that even people who are considered strong or are expected to be strong fall victim to life’s dark desires. Macbeth and Hamlet typify the idea of an unpreventable evil that affects everyone including the strong and righteous. In Hamlet the protagonist begins to reveal his tragic flaw as he struggles with the death his father his mother’s second marriage to his uncle. The ghost of his father tells Hamlet “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life/ Now wears his crown,” (Hamlet 1.5,

If Shakespeare displayed these two men as the stereotypical heroic figures that do not have flaws the overall message of the plays would be lost. If Hamlet had not killed Claudius or lost his mind trying to decide if he should or not, he would not be as relatable to the audience and he would not show that sin affects everyone. If Macbeth had ignored the witches prophecies and not pursed the crown with such ambition he would have never committed murder. Macbeth and Hamlet are supposed to be imperfect, not virtuous men to demonstrate a more real life idea of heroism. Shakespeare picked powerful and upper class men because people expect these people to be the most perfect of us all, which makes his point even more powerful to the audience and impactful to his point. Shakespeare exemplified the temptation of sin in real life showing that even those who are of the highest expectations can fall from the dark desires of