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dramtic tragedy is based on the central idea that a person full of promise loses evrything.?

If Hamlet, Macbeth and Lear were the central figures of tragedy in the 16th century whereas, today, Tiger Woods is our compelling tragic figure ... what insights does this give us into the values of contemporary Western soceity?

ps. I'm a sociologist asking this question ... not a sociolgy student, trying to answer it . In other worlds I thin I've got some idea but I'm really interested in your ideas about it.

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    My ideas are reflected by the links below, see if you find them useful.

    TRAGIC HERO CLASSICAL DEFINITION

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_hero

    http://www.answers.com/topic/tragic-hero

    http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/santorar/engl190v/trag...

  • 1 decade ago

    The insight, if such it can be called, is that human beings love to destroy anybody who looks good ,they are always looking for a way to chop them "down to size" The reason for this is that we all, more or less, feel inadequate and if we can diminish someone else it makes us feel bigger. This is illogical, primitive thinking because no matter how small we make someone else we are not getting any bigger! (In fact at some deep level we know we are being unfair and nasty and that doesn't make us like ourselves more, so we are also diminishing ourselves.)

    There are people who do not feel like that about their fellow humans but unfortunately they are few and far between.

    People can learn to love themselves and others but the prevailing culture of making money out of our weaknesses works against that ever happening. (Competition, commerce, media bias etc.)

    Source(s): Observation of life!
  • 1 decade ago

    There's nothing tragic about someone who commits evil without just cause, i.e. "the lesser of two evils". If he wanted to sleep around, he could have divorced his wife first.

    However, if he were tragic, then it would say that today's society is not much different than that of the 16th century. Sex, power and scandal.

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