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Examples Of Pride In Hamlet

Good Essays

Avery Kohler
AP English 12 Hour 2
Julien
8 January 2018
Excessive Pride
It is a commonly known occurrence, in real life and in literature, of someone who has excessive pride to allow it to alter their attitude and personality and affect their fate. In many cases, having this pride can lead to a fatal or tragic flaw. In ancient Greek tragedy, heroes tend to have incredible amounts of pride which causes imprudence and their destiny is altered because of this pride. This is known as hubris. With this hubris comes hamartia, where the character’s fate stems from a tragic flaw. In Shakespeare’s well-renowned play, Hamlet, the protagonist, Hamlet, is a victim of great hubris. Throughout the novel, Hamlet is continuously attempting to determine factors …show more content…

Because of his pridefulness, as he is trying to avenge his father’s death, he consistently has the inability to act until the end of the novel. This is Hamlet’s fatal flaw. One of the best examples of hubris, other than Hamlet, is in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. In this novel, Oedipus suffers from excessive pride, this pride being his tragic flaw. Because of his extreme pridefulness, Oedipus tries to defy his destiny from the gods, but eventually he realizes that he could never escape his fate and does exactly what he was warned against. Hubris in real life can be reflected through the many dictators in our world’s history. Not only can many dictators be characterized with extreme pride, mainly because of their associates who provided constant praise, but with this trait leads to an inevitable downfall. Characters and people who carry a hubristic trait seem to be quite ignorant, while Oedipus and Hamlet may not have been in the same situation, the two have many similar traits personality-wise. Hamlet expresses his hubristic trait when it comes to someone other than himself, he tends to lack compassion and be more selfish than anything. Moreover, the use of hubris and hamartia in Hamlet,

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