Comparing Hamlet And Things Fall Apart

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The perfect tragedy requires the perfect tragic hero. Aristotle, a famous Greek philosopher, defines both of these terms for the common Western dramatic narrative. He describes a tragedy as a work in which significant events lead to unfortunate consequences for the protagonist. The plot of a tragedy follows a tragic hero from extreme fortune to a sudden peripeteia, reversal of fate, which ends with the tragic hero becoming supremely disconsolate due to the events of their tragic fall. An Aristotelian tragic hero possesses specific traits including hamartia, a flaw or error in judgement, and hubris, excessive pride, which must cause their own misfortune. Two works of literature, the novel Things Fall Apart and the play Hamlet, both exemplify…show more content…
When he returns to his home village, he discovers that Christian missionaries have fundamentally changed his tribe’s culture. In a fit of rage over these new circumstances, Okonkwo decapitates a court messenger but, without the support of his tribe, commits suicide due to his inability to cope with the sociocultural changes brought by the Christians. Likewise, the play Hamlet ends with the protagonist’s, Hamlet, death. The play begins with the ghost of Hamlet’s father, Old Hamlet, accusing Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, who recently married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, of murdering him. Hamlet vows to avenge his father’s murder but first decides to put on a play to test Claudius’s guilt by watching his reaction to a dramatization of Old Hamlet’s murder. When an opportunity to kill Claudius arises, Hamlet decides not to take it and instead goes to his mother’s room to make her feel guilty about marrying Claudius. Eventually, Claudius devises a plot to kill Hamlet through poisoned fencing foils but this backfires on Claudius when Hamlet finds out and stabs him but Hamlet had already been wounded by the poisoned foils so he died shortly
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