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Why Is Hamlet Regarded As A Tragic Hero

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I am writing this essay to deal with the question how and why is Hamlet regarded as Shakespeare’s most compelling tragic hero. First of all, I am going to define a tragic hero. Afterwards, I would like to outline my opinion towards this question. According to Aristotle a hero of a tragedy must awake in the audience a feeling of pity or fear. Besides this, the hero must come from a princely family or from nobility. It is also important, that the character has many great characteristics so the audience evoke with the tragic hero. The hero starts with motivation and the story ends bad for the protagonist, most of the times it ends with their own death. All of these characteristics are fulfilled from Hamlet. The first character trait a tragic hero must fulfill is to awake a feeling of pity and fear in the audience. This happens at the point where Hamlet is thinking about suicide were he gets an interesting character (Act 1 Scene 2 p.23, 25). Furthermore, Hamlet is tough, grief world and upset with his mother’s love life with her new husband Claudius. He also feels betrayed when his mother marries his fathers brother so soon after his father’s death and he says “she married. O, most wicked speed, to post/ With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!”. This situation startles the audience because it is not a common one. In Hamlet’s eyes life is awful as well as being dead because we all die anyways and “[he is] ready; now or whensoever, provided [he] be so able as now”. (Act

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