Shakespeare's Hamlet Was No Tragic Hero

Hamlet Was No Tragic Hero As written and performed by many Greek stories, a tragic hero is an archetype that many apply to the play Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare. In the play, the character Hamlet is on a mission to avenge the death of his father by killing his uncle, Claudius. This eventually leads him down a road he doesn’t want to be on and tragically dies in the end, along with claudius, his mother, Gertrude, and his dead ex girlfriend's brother, Laertes. However, as many believes Hamlet to be, Hamlet is not a story of a tragic hero, but one of a man who makes bad decisions. Hamlet does not follow the definition of a tragic hero. In Annalisa Quinn’s Article Lance Armstrong, Tragic Hero? Not Exactly, Quinn defines what a tragic

As previously explained by Quinn’s article, a tragic hero must have a fatal flaw that causes them to fall. Hamlet had corrupted influences that caused him to fall, it was not entirely his fault. The ghost that appears as his father had convinced Hamlet to go after Claudius for the alleged killing of Hamlet's father, “If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not. Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest” (I. v. 81-82). The Idea of killing Claudius did not come from Hamlet, nor did Hamlet seem to confider killing Claudius beforehand. Hamlet was emotional towards Claudius, but the only person Hamlet mentioned killing before this time was himself. It was not his own fatal flaw that caused him to fall, the ghost had corrupted a grieving man convincing him to seek revenge on his uncle. To which Hamlet could have avoided the fall in the first place if Hamlet avoided corruption from the ghost and move on with his life. Before the ghost told Hamlet that Claudius killed his father, Hamlet was weary of the ghosts intentions. If Hamlet had only done what he so hated about himself, thinking instead of acting, the situation Hamlet had created could have been avoided entirely. Hamlet is not a tragic hero because he had no fatal flaw that caused him to fall, he had been corrupted by