Peripeteia

Tragic Hero In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The book tells a story about Okonkwo, a man of power and authority, suddenly fall from the good graces of the townspeople and tragically die. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe uses Aristotle’s five components of tragedy to depict Okonkwo as a tragic hero. Achebe uses the Aristotle’s first component of developing a distinguished hero in order to establish Okonkwo as an established hero. Okonkwo was a man of war and a member of high…

All My Sons by Arthur Miller has been argued by many to be a modern tragedy while others claim that his play, All My Sons, cannot be considered a tragedy. However, to truly debate if Miller was able to created a modern tragedy, one must first know what a tragedy is. “Tragedy”, as first coined by Aristotle, a famous Greek philosopher, is defined as a play that portrays the fall of a good character because of a catastrophic mistake by the protagonist. A true tragedy must also evoke pity and fear…

The Tragic Hero of Antigone: Creon How far would a person go for what he/she thought was right? Would it be the right decision? How will it affect his/her loved ones? In Sophocles’ tragic drama Antigone, King Creon is forced to answer these questions. He is a very stubborn man and did not take anyone’s opinion into consideration, even when it affected his family and also his country that he is expected to make smart and also correct decisions for.. Even though Creon loves and adores his family,…

Okonkwo A Tragic Hero in Things Fall Apart According to Aristotle " a tragic hero is a character who is noble in nature, has a tragic flaw and discovers his fate by his own actions". By definition Okonkwo meets all the criteria of a tragic hero and although written thousands of years apart and in a different culture Okonkwo is comparatively similar to Oedipus in Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King”. Oedipus Rex is the ideal tragic hero of Aristotle (Barstow,1912). Additional criteria are provided by…

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher as well as an apprentice of Plato. He founded a school and studied many different things. One of the things he studied was poetry, or as he referred to it, Poetics. Aristotle’s Poetics consists of a list of principles which he believes makes up “good” literature. These principles include plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. Aristotle felt that in order for a piece to be considered “good” literature it must include those things, but was…

Within the world of storytelling, one character that has stood out since the beginning is identified as the tragic hero. Philosopher Aristotle created the tragic hero in his book Poetics; Aristotle characterized a tragic hero as a tragic flaw, excessive pride, a reversal of fate, punishment that cannot be avoided, and the pity and fear felt from the audience (Aristotle 39). Shakespeare used the tragic hero guideline in many of his plays; not all those tragic heroes are true tragic heroes as…

Sophocles's Theban plays demonstrate mastery of tragic irony, character development, and plot. The story surrounds Oedipus, the king of Thebes, who murders his father and sleeps with his mother, as was prophesied. The main character exhibits several character flaws which impact his actions during the play. Oedipus reflects his hubris through his intelligence and arrogance, as seen in his treatment of Tiresias and his confidence in finding the murderer of Laius. His hubris harmfully affects his…

But even more crucially, plot epitomizes the rationality of tragic mimesis. Plot is not simply a mimesis of action but of action ordered and structured to achieve certain ends. Unlike the theatrical staging associated with spectacle, which Aristotle sees as irrational, plot is governed by reason. The incidents in a tragic plot should be unified by probability and necessity. Such unity does not 40 FOUNDATIONS come from the focus on a single character, since an individual’s life may…