Tragic Hero’s date far, far back. An example of a modern day tragic hero is Paul Walker. A tragic hero possess many characteristics explained by Aristotle such as hamartia, the downfall of a hero, anagnorisis, the moment when the hero makes an important discovery, hubris, the excessive pride and disrespect of the hero for natural order, and catharsis, the feelings of pity and fear the audience feels for the hero after his downfall and more.
Paul Walker, a modern day tragic hero, is an adrenaline junkie, comical, he has a sense of famous pride, he’s an heroic stunt man, and is influential. His tragic flaw, hamartia, was the fact that he was a complete adrenaline junkie and had a constant “need for speed”. Walker had an unfortunate downfall when he entered a car for charity event with his friend and financial adviser. He realized there was something wrong with the Porsche when it was not able to manually slow down, or the anagnorisis, this was stated in news articles and presented on the news. He had supposedly already braced for the crash at this point. The audience, or simply his entire fanbase, experienced extreme sorrow and grief after his tragic death, the catharsis.
However, Oedipus is just as much as a tragic hero as Paul Walker is. He posses just about all the same characteristics. He had lots of good things about him such as being caring and compassionate, he is confident and strong, and he is trustworthy. With all that being said, the hamartia of Oedipus is that he is overly-confident and displays hurbis, the excessive pride and disrespect of hero for natural order. He is also short-tempered and impulsive. His hamartia, in this case would be the fact that he is short tempered makes him too fervent to know the truth about Tiresias. His hubris of being excessively proud as the king makes him he believe he must know the truth and refuses to let Tiresias go without telling him. At the end of the story, the catharsis is represented when the audience most definitely whimpers and shudders in horror when he stabs his own eyes out after finding the truth.
All these characteristics are also shown in Othello. In the beginning of the story, Othello was strong and brave. He
had a very sound personality and people could easily rely on him. One of Othello’s biggest hamartia is that he is too trusting of Iago and that he lets jealousy get the best of him. His anagnorisis was the worst of them all. After hearing Iago’s lies for so long and no just asking Desdemona himself, he completely changed into a jealous and unreasonable person which starts his anagnorisis. The once calm and collect Othello becomes furious and murderous. After his downfall, he becomes a very mean and fatal person. When he later discovers Iago’s lies and false stories, catharsis is represented because the audience all feels bad for him and feel empathy for his sorrow.
Both of the tragic hero’s could have most definitely avoided their tragic ending. Oedipus could’ve avoided his tragic ending simply by keeping his calm rather than being so short-tempered. He also could’ve just been confident rather than cocky and arrogant. As for Othello, he could’ve avoided his tragic ending by doing the most simple task of asking Desdemona himself about her false affair with Cassio. He let jealousy get the absolute best of him when he very simply could’ve avoided the situation as itself.