Such a great post. Hamartia: missing the mark. So well-phrased, rather than flaw. It really puts the onus on the characters themselves, not some mysterious inbred flaw they couldn't divert around, avoid. Which makes the Greek tragedies even more tragic. And leaning on the Bard, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves." So he knew, too. And I loved this phrase, "disaster and arrogant fools being the stock in trade of the Greek tragic world (and ours, at the moment)."
Jeanine, thank you so much for this lovely comment! Hamartia (in ancient Greek) also means 'missing the target' in the context of archery. What a good parallel in Julius Caesar - I hadn't thought of that! (euge - pronounced you-geh - is Greek for 'well done!)
I’d always rather liked the concept of ‘the flaw,’ but good to allow those protagonists to go out and make a mess of it all on their own ( which we mere mortals do so well). I’m going to dwell on the concept of disaster and arrogant fools for awhile. It has a real ring to it—and until about 14 days ago, I thought it was destined.
I feel smarter just for reading your well-researched essay!!! Would you agree that Donald Trump is guilty of hubris and greed at the very least? Is there a Greek myth about lechery? I am a new follow
Thank you so much, Elaine. Trump is indeed guilty of hubris because he tries to hurt people. Aesop’s Fables address greed, and Herodotus, the so called Father of History, shows some serious examples of greed. Legends of the heroes come a little closer. (The tragedies focus on mythical kings and rulers who have all they want.) Homer’s Odyssey is the biggest and best example of greed run amok, paired with violence. There was never enough for Odysseus, and the same was true of his enemies who took over at his home while he was away for 10 years. Lechery is complicated because the ancient world was so thoroughly patriarchal that using women was not remarkable. In myth, the gods, especially Zeus, were completely untrammeled in their lechery. Rules for humans and gods were not the same. Best example of gods’ sexual exploits are in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which I highly recommend. Find a more or less recent translation so that things are not cleaned up. Phew! Ask a teacher a question, you get a lecture! (If you want to subscribe, it’s completely free forever and I only post once a month or so.)
Thank you for your wonderfully informative response. I collected three books in the last few days that I am too busy (or distracted!) to read. The same will happen if I can find Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I took Latin in high school 🍎 so long ago that I can't remember if we covered Roman mythology. I will subscribe to you and promise, under fear of the “ruler punishment” teachers give, to read your publications. If I had taken more than one philosophy course as an undergraduate at MSU, I might have learned more about Plato and Socrates, et al. Harvey Weinstein’s conviction for sexual harassment being overturned indicates that the USA is similar to the ancient world in terms of the practice of lechery. As is the normalization of Trump's “I grabbed them by the pussy” remarks on Access Hollywood. Respond to a Sociologist and you get a long-winded reply.
Humans don’t change that much, but as you know the social structures in which their behaviors take place change tremendously. No ruler punishment here!
Having recently begun to read and re-read Greek tragedy, I found this article very interesting and helpful.
Regarding the Oedipus story, I think in taking it as a literal metaphor, it presents an interesting observation: every man is prone to 'killing' his father and 'marrying' his mother. I don't mean in the Freudian sense, but simply in the way we appear to be wired, how we tend to behave. Consequently, it presents a cautionary tale.
Your fascinating essay makes me think about writing modern retellings of Macbeth and the editorial choices made to narrate tragic stories. What might a modern retelling of Macbeth look like? Fun "what if" scenarios to imagine.
Agreed - it would be fun. I think that playwrights and dramaturgs understand that a character with a designated tragic flaw is a two-dimensional character. In my limited experience, they do better with adaptations, retellings, etc. My favorite is Anne Carson's Antigonick (sic).
Thank you for such a sober and sobering correction to a long-standing misconception. As always, and as you point out, the most interesting thing about these kinds of misuses of a term is always why they persist despite correction.
Interesting! I don't teach in English, so I have a little freedom. I always talk about hamartia as something we all accept as a virtue (in Oedipus's case, wanting to know the truth, in Creon's, following the letter of the law) that causes a negative outcome. Absolutely not a "flaw". The playwrights' message to "create good citizens" being that bad things happen to good people - even our heroes. So... suck it up and get on with life as best you can.
Tragic flaws strike me as very Southern Gothic: Scarlett wrapped in one of Mammy’s curtains too obsessed with Ashleigh to understand how to love the rascally Rhett. Her jealously of Melanie makes the yammy soap opera a favorite of people who consider reading all those pages and pages of bad dialect an accomplishment.
Tragic flaws make everything so easy. There is nothing that can be done to change the arc of the story as long a the main character has a tragic flaw … not an unfortunate character disorder, mind you. A TRAGIC flaw. So for students and high school teachers alike the discussion screeches to a halt before the group can have an interesting discussion about agency.
People don’t want to relinquish tragic flaws because they are inherently beach book romantic. Why spend time in your book club discussing the mistakes the characters made when we can say in unison TRAGIC FLAW and grab another mimosa. Goodness, learning from the mistakes of fictional characters is likely to lead to disagreements. Fie! And pass the chips….
Thank you for your wonderful essay. I look forward to the next!
Thank you, Linda, for your appreciation and this great take on GWTW and the tragic flaw. Thing is, it's not just the beach read crowd that clings to the idea. It's one of those notions that gets handed down from one classroom to another, and, I just learned, in screenwriting classes, so that people think it is an established fact.
Thank YOU my learned friend! One need only sit though three recent movies to know that Hollywood is enmeshed with tragic flaws. That the idea is accepted as Eternal Truth is itself tragic and flawed.
My high school English teachers extended “tragic flaw” to Shakespearean characters. I always found this a limited way to teach literature; now I know precisely how and why it is wrong. More sobering, on a personal level: I have misused “hubris” my entire life, and had my misperception reinforced by sophisticated readers.
PS - 'Hubris' is one of those words whose meaning has changed over time, like tragedy itself. Today, anything really sad that happens is a tragedy. Irony (that meant 'dissembling' originally) has gone the same route. And that's absolutely fine, semantic shift is part of the fluidity of language. The problem with hubris is that it's come to mean something like being too big for your britches (if I may use an expression from my Texas childhood). For example, "Icarus' hubris made him fly too close to the sun." It wasn't hubris; he was a nepios (a fool who thought he didn't need to listen to his dad).
Yes, that's exactly how I've always used "hubris.' My parents too--he a professor of English, she a writer with a doctorate from Radcliffe. Doubt they knew what a nepios was.
Thank you, Rona! I loved your Rembrandt essay. I’m very slowly catching up on my favorites here at Substack. Who knew it would be so fun and interesting?
This is fascinating! I've never heard this before, and I've taken so many literature classes in my lifetime. And a translation error at the root of it all. l find this freeing - as you likely know, the idea of the tragic flaw in characters often figures heavily in the teaching of screenwriting, which always felt a bit false to me, and false to human psychology. Thank you for this! l always enjoy your beautiful, crisp writing as well.
Hi Constance! No, I didn't know that about screenwriting at all. Maybe that's why we have so many troubled superhero movies? ;) Thank you so much. There's nothing like praise from a writer you admire! I was hesitant to go into teacher mode, but the next play I'm writing about needs that information behind it.
Such a great post. Hamartia: missing the mark. So well-phrased, rather than flaw. It really puts the onus on the characters themselves, not some mysterious inbred flaw they couldn't divert around, avoid. Which makes the Greek tragedies even more tragic. And leaning on the Bard, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves." So he knew, too. And I loved this phrase, "disaster and arrogant fools being the stock in trade of the Greek tragic world (and ours, at the moment)."
What's the Greek word for 'well done?'
Jeanine, thank you so much for this lovely comment! Hamartia (in ancient Greek) also means 'missing the target' in the context of archery. What a good parallel in Julius Caesar - I hadn't thought of that! (euge - pronounced you-geh - is Greek for 'well done!)
I’d always rather liked the concept of ‘the flaw,’ but good to allow those protagonists to go out and make a mess of it all on their own ( which we mere mortals do so well). I’m going to dwell on the concept of disaster and arrogant fools for awhile. It has a real ring to it—and until about 14 days ago, I thought it was destined.
I feel smarter just for reading your well-researched essay!!! Would you agree that Donald Trump is guilty of hubris and greed at the very least? Is there a Greek myth about lechery? I am a new follow
Thank you so much, Elaine. Trump is indeed guilty of hubris because he tries to hurt people. Aesop’s Fables address greed, and Herodotus, the so called Father of History, shows some serious examples of greed. Legends of the heroes come a little closer. (The tragedies focus on mythical kings and rulers who have all they want.) Homer’s Odyssey is the biggest and best example of greed run amok, paired with violence. There was never enough for Odysseus, and the same was true of his enemies who took over at his home while he was away for 10 years. Lechery is complicated because the ancient world was so thoroughly patriarchal that using women was not remarkable. In myth, the gods, especially Zeus, were completely untrammeled in their lechery. Rules for humans and gods were not the same. Best example of gods’ sexual exploits are in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which I highly recommend. Find a more or less recent translation so that things are not cleaned up. Phew! Ask a teacher a question, you get a lecture! (If you want to subscribe, it’s completely free forever and I only post once a month or so.)
Thank you for your wonderfully informative response. I collected three books in the last few days that I am too busy (or distracted!) to read. The same will happen if I can find Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I took Latin in high school 🍎 so long ago that I can't remember if we covered Roman mythology. I will subscribe to you and promise, under fear of the “ruler punishment” teachers give, to read your publications. If I had taken more than one philosophy course as an undergraduate at MSU, I might have learned more about Plato and Socrates, et al. Harvey Weinstein’s conviction for sexual harassment being overturned indicates that the USA is similar to the ancient world in terms of the practice of lechery. As is the normalization of Trump's “I grabbed them by the pussy” remarks on Access Hollywood. Respond to a Sociologist and you get a long-winded reply.
Humans don’t change that much, but as you know the social structures in which their behaviors take place change tremendously. No ruler punishment here!
I'm particularly interested in your next point about a lesser-known Oedipus play by Sophocles. Does it challenge the idea of fate altogether?
Yes and no! It’s such a strange and difficult play that it’s rarely taught or performed. Stay tuned…
Fascinating. And I particularly enjoyed your Martha Stewart take, a new one on me but it sounds only too plausible!
Thank you, Sarah!
Having recently begun to read and re-read Greek tragedy, I found this article very interesting and helpful.
Regarding the Oedipus story, I think in taking it as a literal metaphor, it presents an interesting observation: every man is prone to 'killing' his father and 'marrying' his mother. I don't mean in the Freudian sense, but simply in the way we appear to be wired, how we tend to behave. Consequently, it presents a cautionary tale.
What an interesting idea! Thank you for this, Annette.
I think A. C. Bradley, the late 19th century Shakespearean scholar, has a lot a answer for regarding the preponderance of the tragic flaw. Grrr...
Now I have to look him up! Thanks!
I had to look AC Bradley up, as the name was familiar, and his half-brother is mentioned in my book. Wikipedia gave me this little gem
'His influence on Shakespearean criticism was so great that the following poem by Guy Boas, "Lays of Learning", appeared in 1926:
I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost
Sat for a civil service post.
The English paper for that year
Had several questions on King Lear
Which Shakespeare answered very badly
Because he hadn’t read his Bradley.'.
So thank you!
You are very welcome!
Wonderful poem.
I would go war with my English teachers over Bradley.
Your fascinating essay makes me think about writing modern retellings of Macbeth and the editorial choices made to narrate tragic stories. What might a modern retelling of Macbeth look like? Fun "what if" scenarios to imagine.
Agreed - it would be fun. I think that playwrights and dramaturgs understand that a character with a designated tragic flaw is a two-dimensional character. In my limited experience, they do better with adaptations, retellings, etc. My favorite is Anne Carson's Antigonick (sic).
I will have to find me a copy of Antigonick. Thanks for the recommendation.
Thank you for such a sober and sobering correction to a long-standing misconception. As always, and as you point out, the most interesting thing about these kinds of misuses of a term is always why they persist despite correction.
Thank you, Jeffrey. I read your beautiful essay about the presence of the dead in our lives with great admiration.
Thank you for your kind words, Elizabeth. Much appreciated.
Interesting! I don't teach in English, so I have a little freedom. I always talk about hamartia as something we all accept as a virtue (in Oedipus's case, wanting to know the truth, in Creon's, following the letter of the law) that causes a negative outcome. Absolutely not a "flaw". The playwrights' message to "create good citizens" being that bad things happen to good people - even our heroes. So... suck it up and get on with life as best you can.
I'm in heated agreement. :)
Tragic flaws strike me as very Southern Gothic: Scarlett wrapped in one of Mammy’s curtains too obsessed with Ashleigh to understand how to love the rascally Rhett. Her jealously of Melanie makes the yammy soap opera a favorite of people who consider reading all those pages and pages of bad dialect an accomplishment.
Tragic flaws make everything so easy. There is nothing that can be done to change the arc of the story as long a the main character has a tragic flaw … not an unfortunate character disorder, mind you. A TRAGIC flaw. So for students and high school teachers alike the discussion screeches to a halt before the group can have an interesting discussion about agency.
People don’t want to relinquish tragic flaws because they are inherently beach book romantic. Why spend time in your book club discussing the mistakes the characters made when we can say in unison TRAGIC FLAW and grab another mimosa. Goodness, learning from the mistakes of fictional characters is likely to lead to disagreements. Fie! And pass the chips….
Thank you for your wonderful essay. I look forward to the next!
Thank you, Linda, for your appreciation and this great take on GWTW and the tragic flaw. Thing is, it's not just the beach read crowd that clings to the idea. It's one of those notions that gets handed down from one classroom to another, and, I just learned, in screenwriting classes, so that people think it is an established fact.
Thank YOU my learned friend! One need only sit though three recent movies to know that Hollywood is enmeshed with tragic flaws. That the idea is accepted as Eternal Truth is itself tragic and flawed.
My high school English teachers extended “tragic flaw” to Shakespearean characters. I always found this a limited way to teach literature; now I know precisely how and why it is wrong. More sobering, on a personal level: I have misused “hubris” my entire life, and had my misperception reinforced by sophisticated readers.
PS - 'Hubris' is one of those words whose meaning has changed over time, like tragedy itself. Today, anything really sad that happens is a tragedy. Irony (that meant 'dissembling' originally) has gone the same route. And that's absolutely fine, semantic shift is part of the fluidity of language. The problem with hubris is that it's come to mean something like being too big for your britches (if I may use an expression from my Texas childhood). For example, "Icarus' hubris made him fly too close to the sun." It wasn't hubris; he was a nepios (a fool who thought he didn't need to listen to his dad).
Yes, that's exactly how I've always used "hubris.' My parents too--he a professor of English, she a writer with a doctorate from Radcliffe. Doubt they knew what a nepios was.
Thank you, Rona! I loved your Rembrandt essay. I’m very slowly catching up on my favorites here at Substack. Who knew it would be so fun and interesting?
What an enlightening post about "tragic flaw" -- and how we've extended its meaning and, thus, trivialized it, perhaps. Wonderful essay.
Thank you so much, Mary! I’m behind on all my Substack reading and very much looking forward to catching up with you and Eleanor.
Boy, are you right about Martha Stewart! Enjoyed the post—and learned something!
Then my work here is done! :) Thanks for reading and letting me know.
This is fascinating! I've never heard this before, and I've taken so many literature classes in my lifetime. And a translation error at the root of it all. l find this freeing - as you likely know, the idea of the tragic flaw in characters often figures heavily in the teaching of screenwriting, which always felt a bit false to me, and false to human psychology. Thank you for this! l always enjoy your beautiful, crisp writing as well.
Hi Constance! No, I didn't know that about screenwriting at all. Maybe that's why we have so many troubled superhero movies? ;) Thank you so much. There's nothing like praise from a writer you admire! I was hesitant to go into teacher mode, but the next play I'm writing about needs that information behind it.