Tragic Hero In Othello, Gatsby, And Okon

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What does Romeo, Othello, Hamlet, Gatsby, and Okonkwo all have in common with each other? They all died. These five characters have another thing in common as well, they all fell under Aristotle’s list of characteristics of being a tragic hero. A tragic hero is defined as a man of noble structure or high position that causes his own destruction which evokes pity from the audience. The tragedy depicts the downfall by a fatal error or misjudgment of the good character which produces suffering and majority of the time, death. The destruction/downfall of the protagonist is for a greater cause or principle that the author wanted to get across. According to Aristotle, the seven traits are: Usually of noble birth, hamartia, hubris, the character's fate must be greater than deserved, peripeteia, anagnorisis, and catharsis. In the novel “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo was a leader, warrior and a farmer of the Igbo community called Umuofia in Nigeria. Okonkwo is very motivated to be masculine and prove to his clan that he is nothing like his father, …show more content…

Like Okonkwo, Othello has everything going everything going well for him in the beginning of the story until his tragic flaw result in his suffering and his downfall. Othello was very gullible and prideful which allowed him to be easily fooled by Iago into thinking that his lover, Desdemona, was cheating on him. Due to his pride (hubris), he was highly motivated to get revenge on her for “cheating” and ended up killing her. After killing her, he realized that he judged wrongly and his tragic flaw (hamartia), led to his downfall because he then killed himself right after. Okonkwo and Othello are similar to each other and both perfectly show what a tragic hero looks like. Both experienced their pride turning to shame which resulted in their dishonorable

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