Lear Tragic Hero

For a character to be a tragic hero they must reflect three qualities. A tragic hero must have hamartia, a tragic flaw. There must be peripaetia or a plot reversal in which the tragic hero goes from a secure state to a vulnerable state. Finally, there must be an anagnorisis or tragic insight and recognition in which the tragic hero realizes that they are the cause of their wrong doing. A tragic hero is both a protagonist and a character that the audience is able to relate to. Often times, the tragic hero is one the audience sympathizes with. A tragic hero is a person of high social status and usually involved in a great amount conflict; either personal conflict or conflict with others. In the play of “King Lear”, one of Shakespeare’s well-known

As the audience begins to dislike Goneril and Regan because of their actions, we start to have sympathy for Lear. Because he no longer has any control, Lear suffers and is exposed to the suffering of those around him. Immediately after the division of the land, Lear announces he will live with his daughters and they will support his one hundred knights. Lear thinks everything is fine, but doesn’t know that Goneril and Regan have spoken privately and agree that Lear is simply foolish and old. Goneril and Regan no longer respect their father and actually begin to express their power over him. They treat him as a lesser human being, much rather then their father. After a fight with Oswald, Regan puts Kent in the stocks and Lear is infuriated, but because Regan and Goneril both agree, he can do nothing. At this point in the play, the audience begins to sympathize with Lear. His daughters are ganging up on him and using their power against him. After this dispute, Lear goes into the storm where we see his true colors unfold. Because of the suffering that Lear endures, the audience feels bad for him. The events in which his daughters take control over the land and abuse their power over their father can be seen as King Lear’s peripaetia. King Lear no longer has any sense of security in any aspect of his life; his family is against him and he has no power over the Kingdom. King Lear is now extremely vulnerable and we see this when he runs off into the storm. Lear’s tragic flaw is his immense sense of pride and his peripaetia is the shift from being in power to being of no power. The last quality of a tragic hero is anagnorisis and King Lear realizes that he is the cause of his own wrong doing in the final