Is Santiago a tragic Hero?

What is a tragic flaw?

"A man cannot become a hero until

he can see the root of his own downfall."

Aristotle

A tragic flaw is a literary term that refers to a personality trait of a main character that leads to his or her downfall. Tragic heroes typically have to deal with tough decisions and strange twists of fate, and they end up dead or defeated by the end of the story.

Think about the hare in the fable The Tortoise and the Hare. It's not necessarily the best example of a tragedy, but things do end up badly from the hare's point of view. We know that the hare is capable of running the race much faster than the tortoise, and yet he ends up losing. So, what is it about the hare's personality that causes him to lose? Sure, you could list all of the individual bad choices he made along the way, but ultimately the hare's tragic flaw is his arrogance. He was so convinced of his superiority that he ended up sabotaging himself.

According to Aristotle in his work Poetics, a tragic hero is: “a man not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error in judgment.” They must experience a “change in fortune…not from misery to happiness, but on the contrary from happiness to misery.” This imperfection later came to be interpreted as a tragic flaw. Most importantly, the hero’s suffering is far out of proportion to his flaw. Something big must happen between the hero’s flaw, chance, necessity, or other external forces to bring about the tragic catastrophe.

An apparent weakness is often only an excess of virtue, such as an extreme confidence or zeal for perfection. It has been suggested in such cases, since the tragic hero is never passive but struggles to resolve his tragic difficulty with an obsessive dedication, that he is guilty of hubris (presumption of being godlike) and attempting to overstep his human limitations. According to the critic A.C. Bradley, the Tragic Hero does not have to be a good person, but rather possess much greatness. This greatness is also the tragic trait, which is fatal to him.

It should be noted that the hero's downfall is his own fault as a result of his own free choice, but his misfortune is not wholly deserved. Usually the death, or defeat, is seen as a waste of human potential. But the defeat is usually not a pure loss, as it results in greater knowledge and awareness.