Malcolm X and the Shakespearean Tragic Hero

Malcolm X and the Shakespearean Tragic Hero

Aristotle defines a tragic hero as “good but flawed, must be aristocratic, must be believable, and must behave consistently.” The Muslim leader Malcolm X can be compared to such tragic heroes such as Othello and Hamlet. Malcolm’s life and his personality have similar traits from both of the famous Shakespearean heroes. In this paper we will look deeper into the life of Malcolm X and find the similarities between him and the tragic heroes, also we will prove that Malcom X can also be referred to as one of the great tragic heroes.

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little. He grew up in the streets of Boston and New York where he was known as “Red”. Malcolm became what most young black youths with no direction became “lost”. He became a thief, a hustler, Drug dealer as well as user. He was going down a one way street the wrong way. Malcolm was unstoppable!

“I was a true hustler - uneducated, unskilled at anything honorable, and I considered myself nervy and cunning enough to live by my wits, exploiting any prey that presented itself I would risk just about anything. Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterdays and today's school drop outs are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did And they inevitably move into more and more, worse and worse, illegality and immorality. Full time hustlers never can relax to appraise what they are doing and where they are bound. As is the case in any jungle, the hustler's - every waking hour is lived with both the practical and the subconscious knowledge that if he ever relaxes, if he ever slows down, the other hungry, restless foxes, ferrets, wolves, and vultures out there with him won't hesitate to make him their prey. (Autobiography, pp. 109-110)

Until his reckless ways landed him in prison. For a while Malcolm was still “lost” he couldn’t wait till he was released so he could start up again where he had been abruptly stopped.

At 21 Malcolm was sentenced to prison for 8 to 10 years. Malcolm had become angry with everybody cursing out all that came into his view he even cursed out God. Which ultimately gave him another name “Satan” which he was called by fellow prisoners and guards alike. In prison is where Malcolm met Bimbi a brother of Islam and also a convict. Bimbi introduced along w...

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... also a procrastinator and this is demonstrated many times in the play. He knows that he must kill Claudius but he postpones when he says, "Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge" (III, 3, 79). Hamlet also procrastinates in act two-scene two, line 594 when he convinces himself that his plan to add lines to the play and watch Claudius’ reaction, rather than completing his task, is the best plan of action. Although in the end he postpones the murder of Claudius, “ like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of [his] cause” (II, 2, 576)

Malcolm is just as much of an over-analyzer as Hamlet. Malcolm over-analyzed the situation between him and although he knew that he would eventually die he didn’t know it would be at the hands of some of his own brethren. Malcolm became a member of the religion Islam to begin his own movement powered by his own words and by not confronting the nation he had doomed himself. Also just as Othello he did not realize his own mistakes till it was too late. Leading himself to an untimely death, that is why he is our tragic hero.

Work Cited

Haley, Alex, and Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as told to Alex Haley.) New York: Ballantine Books, 1964.