Musings on Hamartia

[keshwyn]

This morning, amidst the chaos of prepping for the holidays, I abruptly realized that Antosha is a perfect example of the Greek hero with the tragic flaw - hamartia[1]. The Greek writers didn't assume that the hero was a moral person - hamartia for them was an intellectual missing of the mark, a conscious overwhelming choice that resulted in the downfall of the hero/protagonist who made it.

Oedipos is the classic example, in that he allowed his rage free rein at the crossroads, where he slew his father without knowing it. All of his other failures - marrying his mother and impregnating her, thus cursing his city (of which he otherwise was the perfect king) with the wrath of the Gods, and so forth - stemmed from that single act.

Antosha's flaw is the oath he took to Voldemort, lo these many years ago. And he says as much in his elisions in his rant to Barty: Why must this damnable vow hanging around my neck like a millstone force me to destroy everything I have built? [2]

He seems to believe that the breaking of that oath will damn him before the Gods - if I die having broken the oath I made, I will have lost not only this life but any hope of the next. And I wish very badly we knew exactly what he'd sworn! - and so he has not yet broken it, even though he feels Voldemort has broken faith with him. But I wonder what cost would be great enough for him that he will break that oath - Barty's death?

He seems to feel that his own afterlife is more important to him than the lives of those around him, which is interesting; if he breaks the oath after Barty dies, will he have damned himself to never seeing his son again? (Presuming, of course, that he thinks Barty died with honor and thus will be worthy of the afterlife.) Or will he keep it to keep that single hope alive? Has he even consciously considered this?

(Has he, student of the classics that he is, realized yet that he IS a tragic hero? Some of my favorite characters are tragic heroes - Obi-Wan Kenobi jumps to mind - but none of them ever seem to realize what they are amidst the carnage. I wonder if he will get enough time to consider his situation, and understand it...)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia
[2] http://alt-antonin.dreamwidth.org/38248.html

Comments

[kiya]

Ivanova seems relevant... (digs in the IMDB):

"So if we go down there it blows. If we don't it blows anyway just a little later. It's a good thing I'm Russian. We're used to hopeless situations."

And also:

Lt. Cmdr. Susan Ivanova: Doesn't matter. If we lived 200 years we'd still be human, we'd still make the same mistakes.
Dr. Stephen Franklin: You're a pessimist.
Lt. Cmdr. Susan Ivanova: I'm Russian, doctor. We understand these things.

[agathi]

Reason I love Alternity #8941: Fan essays on classic literature.

(Also, Ivanova is made of awesome. Just sayin'.)

I haven't studied this in a very long time, and even back then only in passing - so I could totally be pulling this out of my backside, but I was under the impression that the tragic flaw was more of a character trait that the hero failed to keep in check. (For example, with Oedipus it was rage, with Odysseus pride, etc.) And that it was the loss of self-control that was actually the biggest "sin."

If so, I'm not sure how it would apply to Tosha. I'm assuming what ever vow he took, it was a calculated choice. But then, we don't know the vow, so...

[keshwyn]

There's a lot of scholarly debate as to whether the classical definition of the Greek tragic flaw is a character trait, or a failure of right action at a critical moment, or something else.

Certainly, it's not always a *negative* character trait (which a lot of people automatically assume) - in the case of Antigone, her flaw was her loyalty to her brother and her unwillingness to set aside that loyalty and leave him unburied in the face of an edict from her uncle the King.

(Though I have also read a version of the Antigone story in which the unburied dead brother was supposed to have alternated being king with the still-living brother, and so he was killed trying to reclaim what was rightfully his, rather than attempting to dethrone the lawful king - I digress.)

In some sense, one certainly could argue that the tragic act upon which everything hinges is an expression of the uncontrolled flaw in the person's character. ("Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths that we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view...") In which case, it may be Tosha's blind devotion to his own oath that is now his tragic flaw - his inability to bend, or control what has become an overpowering loyalty even in the face of oaths broken to him first.

[kiya]

I will admit I am greatly wondering whether he will stop obsessing about the maintaining the oath and what it means for his soul and start wondering whether swearing an oath to a lichking in the first place is the thing that might damn him.

Because, y'know, if you think your lich king is sending you to train the zombie hordes specifically because he knows you think the undead are disrespectful of the sanctity of death....