Tragic Hero

Paper Summary:

This paper applies several descriptions of tragic heroes to different literary characters throughout Western literature. The author first presents Aristotle's list of traits necessary for a tragic hero. Other views of a tragic hero are also presented and analyzed from within the context of the works in which they appear. Several writers views of tragic heroes are compared and contrasted.

From the Paper:

"Arthur Miller was certainly aware of the nature of Greek tragedy and made a deliberate decision to use the structure of Greek drama as a basis for his play A View from the Bridge, as he had previously done for All My Sons. The central character, Eddie Carbone, fits well with the central figure in All My Sons and Death of a Salesman, being a family patriarch who has also been a complete failure as a father. He has no children of his own, so he looks after his wife's young niece. Over time, he has developed unconscious sexual feelings toward her, affecting everyone around him. Eddie is an ordinary man living among other ordinary men. The high-born nature of the traditional tragic hero is gone now, though Carbone can be seen as a middle-class version of a high-born hero because he is respected in his community and the head of his household. He is no closer to the gods than anyone else, however, though members of the Italian community have a religious background that colors much of their thinking about life."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bloom, Harold. Arthur Miller. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
• Chanter, Tina. "Tragic Dislocations: Antigone's Modern Theatrics." Differences, Volume 10, Issue 1 (1998), 75-97.
• Miller, Arthur. A View from the Bridge. New York: Viking, 1959.
• Sophocles. Oedipus. In David Greene and Richard Lattimore. Greek Tragedies: Volume 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.

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