The Tragic Hero

One of the first plays read in class in the Drama unit is "Antigone". Prior to reading the play, we learned the concept of what a tragic hero in a piece of literature is.

Tragic Hero:

• doomed to make a serious error in judgment made by an irreversible mistake
• meet a tragic death
• audience is affected by pity and fear
• born into nobility
• actions result in an increase of self-awareness and self-knowledge

"A man cannot become a hero until he realizes his own downfall" - Aristotle 

In the play "Antigone", the main character Antigone fits all the criteria of a tragic hero. Her decision to bury her fallen brother despite the law is what leads to her downfall. In this lesson, I learned in one  of our many fishbowls that a person can either believe that their destiny is lead by existentialism or fate. Existentialism is the belief that a person's outcomes are base on individual decisions while fate occurs beyond a person's control. I believe that a mix of existentialism and fate happen in life to every single person and that one cannot be exist with out the other.