What is tragic hero definition?

A tragic hero is a literary character who experiences a downfall due to their tragic flaw or a mistake that ultimately leads to their demise. Tragic heroes are often depicted as admirable, noble and effective people whose disastrous ending evokes pity and fear in the audience. They typically possess a combination of positive and negative qualities that ultimately result in their downfall. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, was the first to define the concept of tragic hero in his work “Poetics”. According to Aristotle, the tragic hero is a character who is neither completely good nor completely evil, and whose downfall results from a fatal flaw that ultimately leads to their demise. Examples of tragic heroes in literature include King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, and Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman.