Heracles Character Analysis

The play that I chose to read is called “Heracles” and was written by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides around 421-416 B.C.E. (Euripides). The basic story of this tragedy revolves around a man named Heracles, whose family is about to be killed by Lycus, the usurping ruler of Thebes while Heracles is unable to help them as he is in the progress of completing the last of his twelve labors. However, Heracles unexpectedly returns and kills Lycus to save his family from their death only for Hera, a goddess, to send him in a blind rage to kill his own family himself out of her jealousy over Zeus’s affair with his mother (Heracles). According to Aristotle, his ideas of tragedy are defined as “the imitation of an action that is serious and also, …show more content…
Aristotle’s definition of character is “that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents” (Butcher). What he means by this is that the character should have certain qualities that would contribute to their eventual misery in the play. Heracles’ essential quality in the plot is shown in the following quote spoken by Iris, “…him whom they call the son of Zeus and Alcmena” (Euripides). Heracles is the son of the god Zeus and Alcmena which incites Hera’s jealousy towards him as he is the outcome of Zeus’ extra …show more content…
I believe that the moral theme of Heracles becomes clear at the very end of the play when Theseus says to him, “even the strong are o 'erthrown by misfortunes” (Euripides). This implies that the moral purpose here is to not give up no matter how bad the situation is as Hera took every opportunity she could to make Heracles’ life hard for him out of her jealousy. And yet even after losing his family, being unable to bury them or attend their funeral, and being exiled from his home, he chose to live on in Athens instead of taking his own