A Streetcar Named Desire : A Tragic Desire

It is clear that Blanche DuBois is willing to do what she believes is necessary to get what she wants. This often includes deceit. She feels that she needs to lie about herself in order to seem more appealing. Because Blanche is so afraid of aging, she keeps her age to herself. While she is dating Mitch, she often deceives him by never letting him see her in bright light in order to conceal her faded looks. When she comes to New Orleans, Blanche does not tell her sister that she was fired from her job; she says that she is merely taking a vacation from the job. She says this in order to keep up the fake persona she holds. Blanche is very open about her lies with her sister. “I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth.” (69) This shows that Blanche’s lifelong choice of avoiding harsh realities leads to her breakdown. With all of the lies and deceit Blanche tells, she is living an unreal existence.

Aristotle's tragic hero is a man who is characterized by good and evil. He is a mixture of good characteristics and bad characteristics. For example, Macbeth was an honorable Thane of Glamis. He was a valiant fighter who had protected his country of Scotland well, but he wanted to be king. His "vaulting ambition" caused him to kill King Duncan which ended up in his fall.  Aristotle's tragic hero has a tragic flaw, or harmatia, that is the cause of the downfall.

It is clear from the beginning that Blanche is not a very honest character. She lives in a fantasy world of her own design. One of the very first things she does when she enters Stella’s

A tragic hero is a person who has qualities of a hero such as intelligence and strength but makes choices that lead to their self-destruction. The tragic hero is usually from a noble family or high position. Oedipus from The Sophocles is a tragic hero because he possesses tragic flaws such as hubris, hamartia, and too much curiosity. Marcus Brutus, a Roman politician, also serves to be a tragic hero since he is too naive, honest, and sometimes impulsive. Both Oedipus and Brutus have certain characteristics that determine them to be a tragic hero.

Blanche repeatedly lied to make herself look pure to others. It only served as a masquerade to hide her dirty, sinful reality. She lied about her age, alcoholism, promiscuity, and why she had to leave Laurel. When Stanley asked her if she wanted a shot, she replied, “No, I—rarely touch it” (Scene 1, page 1548). She could not confront her reality, so she retreated to her world of illusion. This was Blanche’s most prominent flaw. If she could have accepted things for what they are, she could have salvaged her sanity. If, from the beginning, she had been truthful to Stanley’s friend Mitch, he could have forgiven her. Dismally, Mitch would not trust her after finding out everything she said was fabricated. “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it” (Scene 9, page 1590). Blanche feared lights which symbolized her fear of reality. She claimed that with Alan’s death, all light had gone out of her life. “And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this—kitchen candle.”

According to Aristotle, “A tragic hero is a character who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice and depravity, but by some error or frailty…” The classic tragic hero has some type of tragic character flaw which creates an inner struggle, leads to his making a serious error in judgment, and leads to his eventual downfall and death.

From my point of view the protagonist of A Streetcar Named Desire is Blanche Dubois. Blanche is a woman who was born and raised in the plantations in Mississippi. She’s about 30 years old. She is an English teacher who got fired for having an affair with a 17 year old student. She goes to New Orleans in 1947 to stay with her sister, Stella, and her sister’s husband Stanley Kowalski.

A tragic hero is a person who has sacrificed their lives for a principle. It is shown in the play that ordinary people can be tragic heroes. They believed so passionately in an idea that they were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, their lives, for it. There are four main aspects that represent a tragic hero. They are hubris, hamartia, catharsis and lastly catastrophe. Hubris is the excess, usually of pride, or overwhelming self confidence. Hamartia is the weakness, usually an error in judgement. Also, known as a tragic flaw. Catharsis is the tragic

According to Aristotle, “A tragic hero is a character who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice and depravity, but by some error or frailty…” The classic tragic hero has some type of tragic character flaw which creates an inner struggle, leads to his making a serious error in judgment, and leads to his eventual downfall and death.

Tragic Greek dramas featured tragic heroes, mortals who suffered incredible 
losses as a result of an inescapable fate or bad decisions. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero is a character, usually of high birth, which is pre-eminently great, meaning they are not perfect, and whose downfall is brought about
 by a tragic weakness or error in judgment. The three Greek heroes Oedipus, Medea and Agamemnon, who each killed a member of their family, carry most of the qualities that make up a tragic hero: being of noble birth, being surrounded by an extraordinary circumstance, and gaining self-awareness or some kind of knowledge through their downfall. There is an important need for the audience to identify with the Aristotelian hero through

While drinking heavily after Mitch’s refusal to marry her, her delusional madness worsens. With very little self esteem left Blanche begins to pretend that there are people

The play A Streetcar Named Desire revolves around Blanche DuBois; therefore, the main theme of the drama concerns her directly. In Blanche is seen the tragedy of an individual caught between two worlds-the world of the past and the world of the present-unwilling to let go of the past and unable, because of her character, to come to any sort of terms with the present. The final result is her destruction. This process began long before her clash with Stanley Kowalski. It started with the death of her young husband, a weak and perverted boy who committed suicide when she taunted him with her disgust at the discovery of his perversion. In retrospect, she knows that he was the only man she had ever loved, and from this early catastrophe

It is necessary to have a clear definition of a “tragic hero”. Aristotle defines a tragic hero as “a person who must evoke a sense of pity and fear in the audience. He is considered a man of misfortune that comes to him through error of judgment” and brings his downfall to evoke the feelings of pity and fear among the audience. Aristotle also names five key characteristics that make a tragic hero a tragic hero. They are as follows: hubris, anagnorisis, catharsis, hamartia, and nemesis. We can recognize these five stages by following Karenin’s thought process throughout this passage.

In the play Oedipus the King, Oedipus struggles to accept the truth and lets his temper over power him. He can be displayed as a tragic hero. His refusal to accept the truth led to Oedipus’ down fall. A tragic hero, as defined by Aristotle, “is a literary character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction.” Sophocles’ Oedipus exemplifies Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero.

In the tragedy “Antony and Cleopatra”, Shakespeare presents our protagonist Mark Antony as a tragic hero. He does this by using a number of dramatically effective methods, including language, staging techniques and structure. Aristotle defines a tragic hero as a character of noble stature who has a tragic flaw (usually hubris which is over confidence/arrogance) and suffers a downfall that is partially their fault but also due to factors beyond their control. The downfall they suffer exceeds the “crime” but the tragic hero gains some sort of self-awareness.