The Characteristics of the Tragic Figure
The tragic figure must be responsible for his own downfall. He suffers from hubris that
leads him to make hamartias or errors in judgment that precipitate his catastrophic end.
Hubris:
a tragic flaw in the temperament or disposition of the tragic figure
(jealousy, hatred, pride, ambition)
Hamartia:
an error in judgment—the tragic figure makes a mistake or a series of
mistakes that sets in motion the consequences that bring about his downfall.
The girl in Joyce’s story is not tragic but pathetic because she is a victim of fate, of
circumstances beyond her control, and not a victim or her own deliberate mistakes or
errors in judgment.
The tragic figure must suffer and be aware of the reasons for his suffering. It is important
to realize that a tragic figure never suffers "poetic justice"; that is, he never suffers as he
deserves to suffer but always more than he deserves, an idea that is perhaps best
expressed by the anguished King Lear when he proclaims "I am a man more sinned
against than sinning." In Joyce’s story, the girl dies instantly; she dies without suffering
and without fully understanding the circumstances that lead her to her death.
There must be a moment of illumination or recognition on the part of the tragic figure
acknowledging that he is responsible for the tragedy that befalls him. To suffer without
realizing why he suffers is to render that character more pathetic than tragic. It is for this
reason that the tragic figure cannot be insane except under very special circumstances and
clearly enunciated conditions. Lady Macbeth, for example, goes insane and dies by her
own hand; but her madness actually heightens her tragedy rather than diminishes it
because it is result of her realization of the evil that she has wrought. Her suffering is so
intense that she cannot bear it, and so, her mind snaps from the pressure of her guilt.
Lear, too, goes insane but only after he recognizes his errors in judgment and is forced to
endure the ingratitude of his two daughters.
The tragic figure suffers both physically and mentally, the anguish of the mind being, of
the two, the greater suffering.
We must know the tragic figure, the soliloquies in the play serving this purpose. A
soliloquy, derived from the two Latin words solus meaning "alone" and loquere meaning
"to speak" is a speech delivered by an actor while alone on the stage showing how he
thinks and feels and indicating the reasons or motivations that compel him to act as he
does. We know little about the girl from the thumb-nail sketch we are given of her and so
while we feel sorry for her, we do not regard her as tragic.
We must respect and admire the tragic figure and pity his downfall. Unlike us, the tragic
figure is not ordinary but extraordinary; we must look up to him as being greater than we
are, not regard him as our equal or as a lesser human being. Thus, we never identify with
the tragic figure, for to do so would be to see him as our equal and therefore not to esteem
him as highly as we should. Rather than identify with the tragic figure, it would be more
accurate to say that we associate with him in that we see, on a lesser scale, some of our
own traits of character, but even more importantly perhaps, we are afforded, through him,
a privileged glimpse into the tragic dimensions of the human condition. To paraphrase
Eliot’s Prufrock, we are not Prince Hamlet nor are we meant to be; we are, instead, all of
us, attendant lords, participating vicariously through the great tragic figures of literature,
in the tragedy of life. The German playwright Friedrich Hebbel put it well when he said
The hell-fire of life consumes only the best among us.
The rest of us sit by the fireside, warming our hands.
Finally, in what is an essential response to the tragic experience, we must be left at the
conclusion of the play with a feeling of waste or a sense of profound loss at the death of
the tragic figure. We must, in other words, be aware of the difference between
What a tragic figure has become
and
What he might have been
and of the great loss of human potential of that tragic figure when he dies at the end of
the play. It might be appropriate to end this discussion with a quotation from the eminent
Shakespearean critic A.C. Bradley who articulates most eloquently the nature and
greatness of a Shakespearean tragic figure:
The tragic hero with Shakespeare, then, need not be "good," though generally he is
"good" and therefore at once wins sympathy in his error. But it is necessary that he
should have so much of greatness that in his error and fall we may be vividly conscious
of the possibilities of human nature…
A Shakespearean tragedy is never, like some miscalled tragedies, depressing. No one
ever closes the book with the feeling that man is a poor mean creature. He may be
wretched and he may be awful, but he is not small… And with this greatness of the tragic
hero… is connected, secondly, what I venture to describe as the centre of the tragic
impression. This central feeling is the impression of waste. (Bradley, 1966, 15-16)