ARISTOTLE'S CONCEPT OF A TRAGIC HERO

In his, book ‘Poetics’, Aristotle has enumerated the characteristics of a tragic hero. To arouse the feelings of pity and fear in the spectators, the tragic hero should not be a perfect man or a bad man. The picture of a perfect man falling from grace will not arouse the feelings of pity and fear in the spectators. It would just shock them. They would think if a perfect man suffers and dies like that they with their defects could never hope for a good life. They would not benefit from that state of mind in any way. The fortune of a bad man turning from bad to good also is unacceptable. The tragic incidents in the life of a bad person will not arouse the feelings of pity and fear in the spectators. Besides, a bad person does not deserve a good fortune. The fall of a wicked and cruel person will lead to a sense of satisfaction and a sigh of relief in the spectators. In between these two extremes there is a kind of man who is neither remarkably good nor a worthless person. He is “a man who enjoys property and high reputation like Oedipus”. The fall of such a person, says Aristotle, due not to his vice or an intervention from outside, but to an error of judgment or a fatal flaw in the person, will lead to the arousal of the feelings of pity and fear in the spectators. This happens because the misfortune is out of proportion to his error in judgment. The suggestion that a great misfortune can befall even a good man due to an error in his judgment will arouse the feeling of fear. And the essential goodness makes the spectators to identify themselves with the hero and take pity for him.