Complexity Within Tragic Heroes

The Complexity within Tragic Heroes In an era filled with multifarious heroes, we usually refer to people, who cope with challenges undauntedly and eventually overcome those adversities on their paths, as heroes. Speaking of tragic heroes, however, while they embrace the same kind of virtues as heroes do, miserable destinies are always await ahead for them. As it was suggested by Aristotle, a hero of a tragedy usually evokes audiences pity or fear, through his "underserved misfortune". Moreover, Aristotle's concept further indicates that a tragic hero would be a man “who is not eminently good and just, whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty”(1). According to Aristotle, tragic heroes …show more content…
Conversely, speaking of Heathcliff, he starts to be an innocent person and turns out to be dehumanized by the author of Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte. Albeit two character's extreme characteristics, I think both characters simultaneously contain wretched and humane features throughout the novel. For instance, "As I fixed my eyes on the child, I saw something glittering on his breast. I took it; it was a portrait of a most lovely woman. In spite of malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips; but presently my rage returned: I remembered that I was forever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow; and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright”(p. 144), Frankenstein confesses his complex thoughts and tender emotions to Victor about his murdering of Victor’s youngest brother William, which had happened at quite the beginning of the story. So, Frankenstein's very humane-like qualities were indeed implied by Shelly at the very beginning of the story, not as one might assume, only at the end of the …show more content…
Toward the end of the story, the seemingly violent and wretched Heathcliff still embraces a sense of forgiveness--“it is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,' he answered. 'Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me” (p. 289), as it is suggested by Heathcliff, within his complex relationship with Catherine, Heathcliff is still remarkably forgiving to his loved one, even if Catherine chooses to mary Edgar Linton. Further, "I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing"(p. 275)-- while Heathcliff finally gets weary of revenging on Catherine's families, he confesses himself to the servant Nelly--in a way of speaking, Heathcliff successfully inflicts pain on everyone around him, and sweeps up everyone in hatred and recrimination; yet he is also aware of the fact that he had gotten himself entrapped in a moor of hatred. Overall, the consistent complexity within Frankenstein and Heathcliff makes them walking on the edge of the heaven and the hell, and feel perplexed all the time, which indeed incurs their inevitable