Barry Bond Tragic Hero

According to Aristotle, in any tragedy, a tragic hero is a literary character born of nobility who possesses heroic qualities but ultimately faces a downfall because of their own fatal flaw in their character or the mistake they make. These events cause the audience to feel emotions such as sadness, pity, and fear. The emotions they feel may have been pent up for a while and then experience catharsis. Three main theories of the tragic hero are the Aristotelian model, the Shakespearean model, and the modern tragic hero. Each model has five defining characteristics, which are nobility, hamartia, downfall, anagnosis, and suffering. The play Romeo and Juliet best models the Shakespearean tragic hero. For instance, nobility is characterized by being

He was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in 1982 but decided to go to college to play baseball at Arizona State University. He set many NCAA and school records there (Tackach 1-2). To sum it up, Bonds was greatly influenced by his and his family's sports background to become one of the greatest baseball players of all time. To continue, Barry Bond's life develops into a Greek tragedy because he possessed the fatal flaw of hubris. His hamartia is that he believed that since he was a superstar, he could get away with anything. Barry Bonds was very cocky and full of himself. He once said “I’ve done a lot in three years”. I became a leadoff man, and I put together better numbers on the board than any other leadoff hitter” (Lemire 4). Although he was cocky, he could usually back it up. In 1992, he had been in the league for 6 seasons and he averaged 30 home runs, 45 steals, and 111 runs batted in (RBI) (Barry Bonds Great Athletes 3). He was the most dominant hitter of his time. But his confidence in himself rubbed some people the wrong way. Giants announcer Duane Kuiper called him a show-off (Lemire 12). In brief, Bonds’ may have been the best player of his era, but he also was the cockiest, and that would come to bite him later