Tragedy and the Common Man

The "tragic flaw” is the general term used in literary criticism for the central cause of tragedy in drama, as it relates to the protagonist’s personality, behavior, or choices. It is related to the ancient Greek idea of hamartia, first coined in Aristotle’s Poetics, to refer to a mistake or accident of fate or judgment that leads to a tragic hero’s downfall; this is often an inescapable situation, or a dilemma that arises due to the innate identity of the hero. In English Renaissance literature, the “fatal flaw” is developed as a more personal flaw in personality or decision-making on the protagonist’s part as they react to events, moving away somewhat from Classical ideas of the immutability of fate and destiny. Miller defines this flaw as “man’s compulsion to evaluate himself justly” (5) when he feels his dignity or rightful place in society has been denied. Not many people will act on this compulsion; while those few who choose not to be “passive” are “heroic,” they will suffer as a consequence of their “onslaught […] against the seemingly stable cosmos,” creating the tragic element (7). Miller thus claims that the tragic flaw exists at the intersection between the hero’s society and the hero himself, and thus tragedy is a means by which we can question and examine existing societal structures.

These are theories from Freudian psychoanalysis. The Oedipus complex is a theory that proposes that children unconsciously form feelings of desire toward their opposite-sex parent and feelings of resentment toward their same-sex parent. It takes Oedipus’s name because of the play’s theme of incest, which many psychoanalysts and literary theorist believe is expressive of a universally taboo desire. Similarly, the Orestes complex refers to the theory of a son’s unconscious desire to kill his mother. Miller mentions these complexes to demonstrate that psychiatric theory argues for the commonalities between the “noble” classical heroes and the universal experience of the ordinary person. As Miller says, these dynamics “apply to everyone in similar emotional situations” (2).

This is a term from the Greek that refers to something that evokes feelings of sadness or pity. The Greeks established it as one of the three modes of rhetorical persuasion, along with logos (appeal to reason) and ethos (the demonstration of authority or knowledge). Miller uses pathos as a counterexample to tragedy, which he sees as heroically optimistic. While the pathetic hero, inspires sadness because is his “incapable of grappling with a superior force,” (24) the tragic hero “enlightens” with the “trust for freedom” (17).