Tragic hero

According to Schiller, the tragic hero is a character who is in an irresolvable dilemma and fulfills the following criteria, or are you after:

• The main character suffers.
• The main character is faced with a decision.
• The main character decides to "unnatural", ie they renounced personal feelings and instincts and is morally correct, without self-interest.

• The main character has to endure more than they deserved.

• The main character has a bad / dark fate from the beginning, but they can not take responsibility for their weakness.

• The main character is of noble birth, but so that the audience can see themselves in it.

• The main character must be able to see and understand their fate, as well as the fact that their actions will be their undoing.

• The heroic story should combine fear and empathy.

• Ideally, the tragic hero is a king or leader so that his "subjects" experience the downfall with him.

• The hero must be intelligent to learn from his mistakes.

Another view of the tragic hero is the one in which he or she have a tragic virtue. In this paradigm, the hero possesses characteristics that would apply under conditions other than desirable but will be judged negatively because of external circumstances.

Example

A city is besieged by merciless barbarians. After several storm does not succeed, however, these take the city. When the barbarians have been playing with the idea to raise the siege, they manage to get the children of the governor in their violence.

Just outside the city, the barbarians placed the governor with a choice: either he hand over the city to the barbarians without a fight and gets his children safely back, or he does not bow to what the immediate demise of his children resulted. Since decides the governor, although he loves his children more than anything, not to disclose the city. Then the barbarians murder the children in front of the governor's eyes and pull. The governor becomes the tragic hero.

• Literary term
• Theater experts