A little help here - tragic heros

Okay, I need to find a source and it’s impossible to type in ‘tragic hero’ on google without the resulting cesspool of pathetic essay attempts. One of my teachers long ago taught me this:

There are three types of tragic heroes:
Lowest – the hero has a choice between good and evil, chooses evil.
Middle – the hero has a choice between good and another good (both resulting in trouble for him), choose a good and suffers.
Highest – the hero has a choice between evil and evil and this thus damned.

But where is this from? It’s not in Poetics – I’ve looked there. Or maybe it is, and I’m not reading it properly. Does anyone out there have a source I can use? Thanks!

 

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I've always struggled with the "tragic hero" especially when it came to literature like Death of a Salesman. I always thought he was an old hack who realised his inferiority and killed himself and rid his seed from the world. I had to bullshit the whole essay and I did well on it. Perhaps your teacher stole it from another teacher. That's usually the way it happens with English. Just source it from your old teacher.

 

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What's a tragic hero? Or was that the question?

Here's my first link for googling "define tragic hero".
http://www.teachtheteachers.org/projects/JZarro2/process2.html

So basically it's a hero that doesn't live happily ever after, through a series of personal choices.

In that case,what of heros that are given a choice between good and evil, choose good, and perish anyway?

 

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CP - Okay, I'll name my old teacher as the source unless someone else has any idea where different levels of tragic heros come from.

R - No, that wasn't the question. Thanks for comeing out.

 

You were looking for a source telling of the levels of tragic heroism, and I was wondering if that was part of a tragic hero's definition.
Then I wondered if I really knew what a tragic hero was, and put the link there to tell you that's what I'm using as my definition of a tragic hero.

But I've never heard of those ranks. They seem out of sink with the [Greek] definition in my link. I don't think a tragic hero would choose evil over good, because that would make him a villain, right? If he chose evil it would not be a moral failing but a lapse of judgement, or a flaw of pride. If he chose evil because he got off on it, his demise (unless he repented, I suppose) would be justice, and not tragic at all.

Perhaps you should define a tragic hero in a few sentences.

 

Are you sure this is about heroes at all?

Namely, in older literature theory, *any* main character in a novel was called a "hero"; this naming going back to the times when the main character of a novel has indeed been a hero.

If you replace "hero" with "main character" in your definition above, you get

There are three types of tragic main characters:
Lowest – the main character has a choice between good and evil, chooses evil.
Middle – the main character has a choice between good and another good (both resulting in trouble for him), choose a good and suffers.
Highest – the main character has a choice between evil and evil and this thus damned.

This way, it makes sense.

 

The 'hero' who battles/kills the Dragon for the 'good'.

 

A Shakespearean tragic hero is someone who has many admirable qualities but one "tragic flaw" which dooms him- jealousy with Othello, hesitation with Hamlet...
In Greek tragedy the hero means only the central character, and often- as with Oedipus- has no choice: the gods drive him on.
Ccrimson Scribe: Another tragedy is Antigone, where the characters must choose between good and good and still destroy themselves. Antigone can bury her brother- showing loyalty to family- or let hin rot- showing loyalty to her city. Cleon can execute Antigone- upholding the law or spare her- upholding mercy. Whatever they do they break a divine law and suffer the consequences.
The tragedy in Death of a Salesman is in Willie Lomas's realisation that the rules he lived by and the society that imposed them are false.

 

...isn't tragic. the hero who sacrifices himself to kill the dragon is tragic.

 

T - Well, if you look at the link Roman provided, that's the list of tragic heros as defined bye Aristotle in Poetics. The 'flaw' is central to the definition.

I've given the definition in the essay, but I'm going deeper. I"m positive about the ranking system and it's use in tragic heros - i had to do an essay on it back when i learnt it. They do make sense when used with tragic heros - observe.

My essay revolves around John Halder of the play Good, Oedipus of Oedipus Rex, and Coriolanus of the shakespeare fame. Halder is the basest sort of tragic hero - when presented with a choice, he constantly gives in the the Nazis. Oedipus, one the other hand, is both the lowest and highest level of tragic hero. In the low, he chooses evil (killing a man - the fact that the man was his father is irrelevant to this point) over good (not killing him). He is the highest because he chooses evil unknowlingly (marrying his mother) over what he sees at the time as another evil (flouting her hand in and ignoring newfound respondsibility to Thebes).

Anyway, the system works, but I just need to know where on earth it came from. . . kids, take notes.

 

Yes, that was Aristotle's view: but Oedipus is the most obvious disproof of it applied to Greek tragedy: every choice by every character points him to his fate

 

That's why there's the highest class - Oedipus was pretty screwed. Anyhoo, if know one knows where this comes from I'll just cite my old english teacher.

 

hhmmmm?
would Murdock Jones be a tragic hero?

 

A hero is someone who is willing do do something for someone or risk their life for someone because they are able to feel, understand and react to the person in need.

But not just that, the fact that they do it with instinct and light speed is really what develops a true heroic character / person.

 

so, would "nuke" be a tragic hero? is what i asked.
he's willing to give up his life to save his fiance, and in "nuke 2" he almost dies, willingly, to stop hacker from detonating a nuke in his beloved NYC. In "nuke 4" he ultimately gives his life to stop hacker from destroying not only NYC, but millions of people. His life is frought with tragedy, loss, and death. he loves his fiancee and the people of NY more than he loves himself.
would that make him a hero?

 

Traditionally the dragon is sent as a punishment for the ruler- if it had been Andromeda's father who went out to fight the dragon rather than Perseus it would have been a tragedy. As I said, Oedipus breaks all the rules of tragedy though: the poor bloke doesn't have any choice.

 

Marcus Brutus. had to choose between his more beloved republic of rome OR his beloved & generous friend Julius Caesar. Brutus' blunder might be that he vetoed the fellow senators' plan to to kill Marc Antony alongwith Caesar. He paid the price for that. Anotony emotionally turned the public against Brutus & co. and avenged the death of Caesar. Ever since, romantic poets targetted him as the epitome of betrayal, Dante even put him alongside Judas Iscariot in the lowest level of 'inferno'. Well, not all poets, Plutarch & Shakespeare held him in high esteem as a tragic hero.

 

Brutus a hero?
ha!
he was a cold-blooded murderer.
and he killed Caesar, the guy who laid the foundations for Empirehood!
I say brutus deserved what he got: death.