The Flaws of the Tragic Hero Hamlet in Shakespeare's Hamlet

The Flaws of the Tragic Hero Hamlet in Shakespeare's Hamlet

With Hamlet being generally labeled as the best tragic hero ever created, it is ironic that his tragic flaw has never been as solidly confirmed as those of most of his fellow protagonists. There is Macbeth with his ambition, Oedipus with his pride, Othello with his jealousy, and all the others with their particular odd spots. Then there is Hamlet. He has been accused of everything and of nothing, and neither seems to stick. Flaws are carved out of obscure conversations when he may or may not be speaking truthfully and alleged from instances of his own self-discipline. They are bored into him with the bits of psychological drills invented long after Shakespeare's hand crafted him. But Hamlet is made of that which resists these things. He has no obvious flaw or internal fault.

And so, it seems that perhaps the perception of the tragic hero and his flaw must be re-evaluated. "Flaw" is a bad way of describing the very qualities which make the hero heroic. It carries with it a connotation of a weakness, a gap, a self-destructive crime hidden furtively from view. Having such traits makes not a hero but a villain. It need hardly be stated that there is a profound difference between a villain's punishment and a hero's upward fall to the stars and immortal death. The hero's "flaw" is exactly not what the term implies. It is a strong point, an ungiving, inflexible perfection. It does not fit into the imperfect slot that society gives the hero to occupy. For the hero is always placed in the imperfect world of his author, as he must be, if he is to have any meaning at all. And it is against this cleanly cut strong point that the fissured edges of the broken world grind. And so ...

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...d satisfying to end the play with a complete victory for the protagonist. But that is intoxication, smashing together the true and the false into one jagged aggregate that glitters and pleases and does no good. That is the form of the imperfect world. A tragic hero cannot survive there. So Hamlet must go to his death, as he does, having purged himself of doubt and contradiction, driving through to immortal purpose. Hamlet's truest "flaw" is that he is trapped in a world of personal injustices, and that he must endure through them toward their final resolutions, all the while in conflict with his own mind. It is thus that Hamlet's "flaw" is himself, with his indecisions and his own humanity eating away at him. It thus remains in great irony that the advice given to Laertes by Polonius would have been in great use for Hamlet as a person: "to thine own self be true".