UNIVERSIDAD VERACRUZANA
FACULTAD DE IDIOMAS
Licenciatura en Lengua Inglesa
A REINVENTION OF A TRAGIC HERO IN THE NOVEL THE
BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED BY FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD
Trabajo Recepcional en la modalidad de:
Tesina
Presenta:
Jimena Cámara Aguirre
Como requisito para obtener el título de:
Licenciado en Lengua Inglesa
Directores:
Mtro. Victor Hugo Vásquez Rentería
Dra. Iwona Kasperska
Lector:
Mtra. Eileen Sullivan
Xalapa, Ver.
Marzo 2014
2
TABLE OF CONTENT
Introduction
3
Acknowledgments
5
Chapter 1: The History and source of tragedy and heroes in a literary context
6
1.1 Etymological aspects of hero and tragedy
1.2 The inheritance of tragedy and heroes: Ancient Greece and Elizabethan years.
Chapter 2: Tragic Hero Literature
7
11
15
2.1 Sophocles: Oedipus Rex: “A tragedy of fate”
17
2.2 William Shakespeare: Hamlet: “A tragedy of revenge”
19
2.3 Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises: “A tragedy of maleness”
21
Chapter 3: The Ironic tragedy of “things” in The Jazz Age
23
3.1 Francis Scott Fitzgerald: life and works about tragic heroes
25
3.2 The Beautiful and Damned: tragedy and heroism
26
3.3 Is Anthony Patch a reinvention of a tragic hero?
34
Conclusion
37
References
39
3
Introduction
Everyone has grown up hearing stories about heroes and tragedy and creating their
personal definition about what a tragic hero means. Almost everyone understands what is
meant by tragedy and hero, but few are aware of its origins in Greek mythology. The
notions of tragedy and heroes originated in classical times, but they have transformed over
the years. Today’s monomyth is very different from the monomyth of the past: It is a product
of evolution. Our present heroes are molded by the social context of their period. Then,
therefore, there must be multiple definitions of the hero and its archetype.
Throughout the years the hero archetype has been a common theme in literature around
the world finding expression in both poems and legends. Some of the most famous tragic
heroes were born in Greek epic poems and then were re-elaborated first in dramas and
then in novels. Modern tragedians, instead of writing about kings and princes as
Shakespeare often did, have used their own inspiration to create new heroes who reflect
their own time and place; sometimes the heroes that they create are also a reflection of
themselves.
The aim of this capstone essay was to show how these realistic protagonists are modern
heroes. In doing this, I have begun by examining the model of both the Greek and the
Shakespearian hero. Then I compared them with Fitzgerald’s main character of the novel
The Beautiful and Damned, Anthony Patch, and thus produced an overview of a different
type of hero. In the first chapter of this paper, I have presented the origins of tragedy and
heroes by inquiring into the characteristics of the Homerian heroes and of the most famous
heroes of Ancient Greece as portrayed by the three most representative Hellenic poets:
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Moreover, I have explored the etymological
definitions of tragedy and hero and explained the philosophical and historical aspects.
According to Steiner (1961) it is impossible to discuss tragedy without delving into the
inheritance of Hellenic and Elizabethan literature. The evolution of tragic literature during
these two periods formed a basis against which Neoclassicism reacted, creating tragedies
based on somewhat different principles.
In the second chapter I have exemplified some realizations of the hero archetype,
beginning with the Greeks and going up to the middle of the twentieth century. Oedipus
Rex, the first work of the trilogy by Sophocles, is one of the most representative Greek
dramas: a prince is abandoned by his father in order to avoid a tragic prophecy which is
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ultimately fulfilled anyway. By the time of English Renaissance, tragedies reappeared. An
outstanding example of such tragedies is Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet. Also a prince,
Hamlet, is tormented by the demand for revenge by his father’s ghost and his own mental
issues. At this point, the focus of my essay will shift to a new kind of hero which appeared
between WWI and WWII to rebel against the old traditions which seemed outmoded. The
new hero is an ordinary man struggling with personal problems against a background of
economic hardship or war. Hemingway portrays this new tragic hero in his novel The Sun
Also Rises, a tragic love story about Jake Barnes, who has been left impotent by a war
injury and is now in love with an engaged woman. In other novels, Hemingway explores
issues as decadence and heartbreaks, characteristic elements in the writings of the 1920’s.
The heroes of these novels are more understandable for modern readers. In addition the
new heroes sometimes reassemble their authors: Hemingway’s Jake Barnes and
Fitzgerald’s Anthony Patch. The war takes away Jake Barne’s manhood; it only
inconveniences Anthony Patch by obliging him to give up his excesses.
Chapter three analyses in depth a single hero who is representative of the literary heroes of
the 1920’s: Anthony Patch the protagonist of the novel The Beautiful and Damned. The
partly-autobiographical novel is a social document about the Eastern elite in New York; the
writer deals with themes such as love, money and decadence. Anthony and his wife Gloria
are complex in their marriage and intimacy. Fitzgerald describes a lethargic and
disillusioned post-war society trying to find prosperity and a reason to progress. The couple
reflects aimlessness of their times and live their present as if New York was an enormous
playground. It is evident how Fitzgerald’s main character, Anthony, is a vivid incarnation of
him, a troubled character for whom a tragic end was inevitable. It is impossible not to feel
empathy for his disenchantment about life and excuse his outbursts of melancholy and
depression. Some critics have rated the book as excellent, but others regarded as too
pessimistic.
Because of the radical transformations that the tragic hero has undergone over the
centuries, I chose to examine the new hero-- or possibly antihero-- who lacks the attributes
of the Greek and Renaissance model. The purpose of this research was to discover: Why
does Fitzgerald give the name “hero” to a character who has no heroic attributes.
5
To M who likes Greek heroes
To R who likes superheroes
To my parents who are MY heroes
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Chapter 1: History and source of tragedy and heroes in literary context
Throughout the years literature has provided us different kinds of tools for creating a model
of the term hero. The social conception about this notion is influenced by historical writings
that have made a generic and imprecise analysis of the origin and use of terms such as
heroes and antiheroes. For creating a well defined concept about the archetype of a hero it
is important to make a category system taking into account cultural, linguistic and historical
differences. According to Bauzá (1998) a proper analysis of the hero myth goes beyond to
the conceptual field about heroic legends; it is captured in the context of the history of ideas
and thought (p. 3).
The technical use of the word hero is commonly associated with mythology. The classical
term is not a fixed precept; it changes accordingly to historical circumstances and from one
country to another, therefore it needs a global deliberation considering that there are many
examples around the world which vary from epic poems to legends. This notion has its
roots in history, it all starts with the epic moments that belong to people and time of speech
of that nation, without those circumstances there wouldn’t be writings such as The Iliad and
The Odyssey from the classical Greece. Those epic poems are the reflection of social and
individual history, an expression of society and condition of its existence. Consequently, this
is how all the references about the origin of the term hero are related to Hellenic times, a
historical moment in which there where born the first and most iconic writings about tragic
heroes.
To understand the principles of the term heroes and tragedy it is important to go into the
collection of philological and linguistic data, in order to undertake the description of the
origin of these terms and apply them to the cultural significances and continuous changes
over the years, not to mention the historical roots that has influenced in the anthropological
and sociological aspects about literature of tragic heroes. The beginning of this research
starts with the morphological aspects of hero and tragedy that were born in the Ancient
Greece and then many years later had impact in the occidental culture. Furthermore it will
represent a semblance about heroes and tragedies in the Classical times and Elizabethan
years who promoted them as a literary attempt and caused an impact in the later narrative.
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1.1 Morphological aspects about hero and tragedy.
1.1.1 Hero
For making an analysis about heroes and tragedy it is important to start categorizing the
different definitions of these terms and find what aspects they have in common. In
agreement to Escribano (1981) the cultural and polysemic barriers are the most difficult
ones, the multiple meanings that handle the dictionary despite being very general are the
first point of reference that we need to clarify. In the field of literary aspects it is important to
start a research by making a semantic division about the topics in question. To start
categorizing the term hero it is crucial to ascertain its connotative origins, If we look up in
the Oxford English Dictionary (2014) the word hero we will find out in most of cases these
characteristics:
A hero is:
1) A noble man or demigod
2) The male main character in literature
3) A person who accomplishes outstanding achievements
4) A male character with good qualities
These four features are the most repeated and maybe the most difficult to associate to the
archetype of a hero if we take as a reference the types of culture and try to adapt to the
changes over the years. As Bauzá (1998) refers the different explanations despite being
generalizing and in some way all-embracing, fail to involve all varieties of behaviors that are
included under the significance of the word hero (p. 3). The heroic figure is merely an
historical definition based on the classical precepts about Greek heroic writings, based on
on the peculiarities of the era. However, the origin of the term hero comes from the Greek
Héros and it was found primarily in the Homeric writings The Iliad and The Odyssey. In the
Ancient Greece was believed that these personages were noble men who were born from a
God and a mortal; this theory is only a Hellenic conviction (Vernant, 1989).
With reference to these precepts came up a new web of researches and analysis that
change the most significant characteristics of this term. From epic poems to legends these
writings revealed the sense of the mythological heroic figures differing only in historical and
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cultural significances. The epic hero is also known as tragic hero in the Ancient Greece, the
heroic character can only be studied whether the epic hero is also a tragic character based
on the Greek poetical tradition that makes these personages as the main target of study
that is extremely related with epic and drama plays. Heroes are the ethos’ expression, it
means the expression of the people because they are judged and approved by their own
nation. They imply a category system of attributes of values and achievements.
The classical category of heroes was represented by triumphant, splendid performers,
heroes of merits or social acceptability, group servers, independent spirits. In accordance to
Crescenzo (1995) there were precisely Homeric heroes with their snorts but also with their
exceptional nature who dictated the models for later generations, perhaps some of the most
rated were Hercules, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, Patroclus, Menelaus, Paris, Ajax or
Agamemnon (p. 16). But these people just embrace a part of these mythological events. As
Bauzá refers (1998) the study of the semantic categories about heroes involves much more
than mythological aspects in the literary context. Moreover Aristotle (1974) concerns to the
heroic idea come hand to hand with tragic events as a structure of incidents.
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1.1.2 Tragedy
The sense of tragedy was born in the Ancient Greece and is referred to the drama plays or
literary work based on human suffering with an unhappily resolution. Greek tragedy
appears as a precisely historical moment that is born and flourishes in Athens, its origins
are related to the cult of Dionysus that were festivals which included dramatic performances
(Vernant, 2002). The Greek word tragōidia means “the goat song” but its origins are still
questionable. The tragic or drama plays were representative in the Hellenic times in the
subject of epic heroes because their main characters were a reflection of the epoch in the
dramatic theatre.
Perhaps one of the most celebrated works of dramatic theory is handled by Aristotle in his
writing Poetic. In it the author makes a detailed description of poetry and its elements and
makes an examination of the basic principles of tragedy that are considered the most
discussed. Even Paz (1968) makes an observation on its importance and how Aristotle
claims that dramatic poets take subjects and arguments about epic issues. For the Greek
philosopher, tragedy was a “structure of incidents”:
Es, pues, la tragedia imitación de una acción esforzada y completa, de cierta
amplitud, en lenguaje sazonado, separada cada una de las especies en las
distintas partes, actuando los personajes y no mediante relato y que mediante
compasión y temor lleva a cabo una purgación de tales afecciones (1974, p.
145).
He considers tragedy as situations that inspired compassion and fear. They occur mostly
with more intensity when the tragic situation is unexpected which are determined by key
elements such as reversals, recognitions and suffering where the main character of the epic
poem, the tragic hero in this case, carried out a purge of conditions by a tragic catharsis.
According to the scholar Steiner (1991) tragedy was represented in form of narration by the
medieval times:
Tragedy is a narrative that tells the story of some ancient or eminent character
suffered a decline of fortune to come to a disastrous end. This is the typical medieval
definition. The proper motion of the tragedy is a steady decline of prosperity to the
suffering and chaos (p.15).
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Gilbert Murray (1954) understands by tragedy:
El canto o ficción que se refiere a rápidas muertes y obscuras cosas dolorosas que
nos brinda la revelación, o quizás, la ilusión, de que hay otros valores evidentes de
la vida física o de la muerte, de la felicidad o del sufrimiento, y que, al alcanzarlos, el
espíritu del hombre puede vencer y vence a la muerte. (p. 21)
As a literary genre has its rules and its own characteristics, tragedy establishes the system
of public celebrations of the city, marks a stage in the formation of the inner man. Tragic
genre, tragic representation and tragic person: under these three aspects the phenomenon
appears with irreducible characters (Vernant, 2002). The action became the most important
attribute to describe the tragic perspective of tempting the unknown, incomprehensible and
the supernatural forces and prepare for the success or downfall. The main objective of
tragedies centres on the man who lives for himself a debate, forced to make a decisive
choice to direct his action in a universe of ambiguous values, where nothing is stable nor
unique. But tragedies represented more than that, they portrayed a social institution that
was situated in the Ancient Greece not only as an artistic form but situated next to their
political and judicial bodies.
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1.2 The inheritance of tragedy and heroes: Ancient Greece and Elizabethan years.
1.2.1 Ancient Greece.
In the Hellenic times dramas became an important representation of the people that
handled historical, sociological, philosophical and political facts of an entire nation. Even
though the use of tragedy designated the ways of seeing the world, its origins come from
Greek mythological roots. Drama plays began in honor of the Greek god Dionysius with the
eldest tragic author Thespis when the tragic theatrical performances became an impulse of
tragic theatre as an iconographic piece of art of those years. By that time the most famous
tragic achievements were written by the Classical poets Aeschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides. Some scholars consider Aeschylus as the father of the creating and artistic
process of tragedies, Aristotle (1974) considered Euripides as the best tragedist, but
Sophocles’ tragedies are perhaps the best known nowadays. None of them lived in the
same years, but in different historical moments. They faced the most sensitive issues of
their time and produced one of the greatest contributions to the field. Greek dramas are not
a reflection of society but a questioning, from the most antique tragedy The Persians by
Aeschylus to Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles which puts an end to the age of the
greatest tragic creations. Tragedies changed the horizon of Greek culture since they gained
importance. The tragic genre made its appearance in the late sixth century, when the
language of myth ceases to be in connection with the political reality of the city.
Supporting the theories of Vernant (2002), Greek dramas were based on heroic characters
from the most famous epic poems; the center of their plays was represented by the inner
reflection of the main character. This is how epic heroes were taken as a model because
dramas emphasized their values, virtues and heroic deeds. The earliest item of epic poetry
is the heroic legend. Originally the epic poem arises from the hymn which is chanted
triumphal honoring the victorious leader, in this case the hero. Heroes in the Greek sense
were the main object of study and worshiped in tragedies. These personages were of
course bigger than us and usually heroic in the modern sense. Tragedy proposes a
mythical representation that reflects the tensions and ambiguities that arise in the
confrontation with figures of notoriety, institutions, values, beliefs and customs of the
Athenians of the fifth century. This is how ancient heroes take over the tragic scenario by
questioning about human or divine justice.
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Homeric myths were the reference in the Greek cultural tradition. Epic poems were reelaborated in Greek Lyric poems and then turned into dramas where the tragic perspective
born as a manifestation of the adversities of the tragic character. Theater emerges as a
new way of narrating the ancient myths, reaching the midpoint of the oral tradition and the
triumph of writing. This is beyond the peculiarities of the genre, but anthropological
phenomenon based on the criticism of society, democracy and politics of Athens.
The problem about tragedy is the fact that if we part from the origins of the nomenclature it
will be impossible to overcome the different ramifications such as tragedies, tragic scenario,
tragic perspective, dramas or tragic character. But by inquiring this analysis it is clear how
tragedies as a literary process have been adapted all over the years since they became a
reflection of a country and the criticism of the ways of living in the Ancient Greece. Dramas
as a mirror of society it is not only a Hellenic conviction but it gained momentum in Occident
by the Renaissance times when the English theatre became a voice of the people and the
public the judges of these representations. Even though the tragic hero is conceived as an
ideal archetype of the Hellenic times it will be considerable as Steiner refers in his work
(1991) as the two most representative moments in the course of tragedies and heroes is
the Renaissance and its Elizabethan theatre. At that moment of time tragedies assumed a
more universal value and at the same time more restricted. The tragic sense widened, it
went beyond the fall of the individual greatness (Steiner, 1991, p. 19).
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1.2.2 Elizabethan Years.
In Tudor times the notion of tragedy and the images of tragic condition that were forged in
the medieval literature returned triumphant in the scene of theatre. The use of the term
turned more universal and restricted and the tragic sense became broader. One of the most
important tragic writers of that period and precursor of drama plays (Steiner, 1961) was
Christopher Marlowe, playwright, poet and English translator who was famous for his verse,
devastating theater scene and his contributions to modernization of English theater. His
play Doctor Faustus, very well known for its prose, is based on a story of a man who sells
his soul to the devil for power and knowledge. It was published in 1604 and was one of the
most celebrated tragic works of that time. Moreover he is considered predecessor of
William Shakespeare. After his death, Marlow’s short career opened a path for the new
talent works of Shakespeare, a playwright who is considered (Hyland, 1996) one of the
most popular in the English language and is his plays, unquestionable and a kind of dogma,
are still performed throughout the world.
Shakespearian dramas were inspired and developed in a context where the ideological
interests and political issues reflected the time he was living in, though his works can not be
called universal are recognizable to us and adaptable to any epoch. Member of the theatric
company Chamberlain’s Men William Shakespeare wrote a number of history plays and
romantic comedies. His first tragic attempts were Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet.
By 1600 he took a new direction when he embarked on his major tragedies, Hamlet,
Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. All the elements that represented the previous Greek
model of a tragic figure are captured in Shakespeare’s main characters; the core of his
dramas is represented by a central figure that falls from a position of power or status,
surrounded by personal and social adversities that lead him/her to death.
By 1608 Shakespeare changed direction again, ending his career with plays of forgiveness
and reconciliation, known as romances. Nonetheless, his writings left a legacy that survived
over the years in the reworking of the tragic hero. Under these circumstances the most
influential tragic precepts were created and left an heirloom for the following decades.
Naturally there are thousands of examples of dramas and heroes which were born not only
in the Ancient Greece or in the English Renaissance. Most of tragedies lie in the epic
conception of the man, hero, main character; this is how Greeks dramas are maybe the
most famous because there were based on the tragic nature of the human being. According
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to Aristotle (1974), in the hierarchy of dramas, tragedy is superior to comedy; this is why
Shakespearean tragic plays are considered more important than his other artistic works.
English playwright did not follow any kind of Greek precepts. In essence, dramas were
based on the same but in fact their reflection goes beyond to religious, political and
philosophical aspects which have been changing and modernized through the ages. From
the epic poem of Gilgamesh to the legend of Quetzalcoatl (Paz, 1972) exist more examples
that allow the deployment of the heroic character (p. 195) but these two historical moments
were crucial to the development of tragic works that were changing according to the time of
speech and cultural differences. Furthermore, in these both cases theatre was the most
representative way of reflection of society (Paz, 1972) where their collective consciousness
was historical, objective and current.
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Chapter 2: Tragic heroes’ literature
Even though the Hellenic times and the Renaissance are critical to the development of the
term of tragedy in the history of literature and plays it is important to clarify that the classical
nomenclature was included in the English and Latin language many years later. In Middle
Ages the term tragedy was disassociated from the idea of a play and it was represented in
a way of narrative, a story with an unhappily ending and heroic characters. In one of his
tales Chaucer gives a definition about what tragedy means a kind of story that starts with
prosperity but then falls into misery and ends in fatality. Dante insinuates that tragedy and
comedy are opposite but none of them implies that the real notion of tragedy is particularly
related to the notion of theatre (1991 p.15), the notion of drama plays came to live again in
the times of Shakespeare.
The sense of tragedy has changed according to the context of the era. It wasn’t until the
end of the Neoclassicism that names such as John Milton and Jean Racine were
recognized as promoters of tragedy in the XVII century. Most of the dramas from Racine to
Milton and Goethe have frequently run the risk of re-telling the stories that the Greeks used.
Throughout the years the notion of tragedy has changed from epic poems to dramas and
then, in the last term of the XVIII century, with the birth of Romanticism, it became to be
novels. Some of the most representative tragic literary texts in the times of romanticism
were handled by writers such as Victor Hugo or Jane Austen. The impact of the new ways
of tragedy in literature covered the rest of the XIX century until the beginning of the
twentieth one; this trend was characterized by a criticism of the ways of living of the
contemporary life and society of that period. In the first term of the twentieth century the
most representative realistic tragedists were forged by the tragic context of an era that was
so much influenced with the arrival of the First World War and its end in 1918. The realistic
and modern views of life changed the scene of the artistic and cultural environment, mainly
in The United States.
There are many characteristics to attribute to tragic heroes along history. If the Greek
philosopher Aristotle assigned some features to the classical tragic heroes, in the
Elizabethan times and modern literature were totally different precepts, based mainly in the
background of the tragedists of those times. Numerous are the examples of tragic literary
figures that have been changing according to the pass of the years. Perhaps we recognize
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some classical tragic heroes as the main characters of the stories that have to deal with
unforeseen events which lead to their downfall or death.
In order to undertake some examples of tragic heroes, the main objective of this chapter is
to present a brief analysis of three famous tragic models. Maybe one of the most
recognizable tragic works in the Ancient Greece is the famous Oedipus the King by
Sophocles, a play that centers his plot on a man that has to suffer the curse of an oracle
that triggers the fall of his kingdom and family forever. The second example is handled by
the English, William Shakespeare. His famous Hamlet, considered his longest and most
notable work, describes the events of the prince of Denmark who has to deal with the grief
of the suspicious death of his father and the usurpation of his throne. The incarnation of the
tragic hero in the modern literature is illustrated in the realistic-tragic novel The Sun Also
Rises by Ernest Hemingway. He tells the story about Jake Barnes, a man who was injured
in the Great War and can not fulfill his romance with the woman that he loves. These three
main characters did not live at the same time, but they do have something in common: the
tragic events that follow their lives and possibly they cannot deal with, in order to
accomplish successfully their heroism.
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2.1 Oedipus Rex “a tragedy of fate”
It is easy to relate psychiatry when someone refers the name of Oedipus, and the complex
that, according to Sigmund Freud, stipulates the conflict between the apparent love of the
mother and hatred of the father. Freud named this theory Oedipus complex after the
famous Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (Lucas, 1997) that is maybe one of the
most representative tragic stories of the ancient Greece. According to Greek mythology,
Oedipus became a hero when he released the city of Thebes when it was in danger by the
attack of the Sphinx, a beast with the body of a lion, wings of an eagle and head of a
woman. It was sent by gods to terrorize the people as punishment; after defeating the
monster Oedipus was proclaimed king of Thebes.
In Oedipus Rex by Sophocles we are observers of the growth of the main character many
years later and how he handles the rule of his kingdom. The story begins with a Priest who
begs Oedipus for a solution to the plague that has beaten Thebes. The king sends Creon to
the oracle in order to find an answer which reveals that the city refuges the killer of Laius.
Oedipus swears to find and execute the assassin and he calls Tiresias, a blind prophet, and
he tells the King that he is the one that he is looking for. Oedipus realizes that he was who
killed Laius. In addition, it is revealed that Oedipus was the son of Jocasta. She recognizes
the truth and she kills herself. When Oedipus discerns the fact that his mother is also his
wife, he stabs his eyes. Blinded and ruined he is exiled from Thebes.
There exists a lot of works related to the Oedipus conflict. This material has been used as a
reproduction of society, the plot has archaic history but at the same time current.
Considered the core of Sophocles’ tragic creation, this story has acquired the status of
universal work. Oedipus Rex has been considered as the most perfect model of drama
because its plot is full of unforeseen events. Even Aristotle rates this tragedy as the
greatest ever composed, due to its detailed prose of the fall from grace after his coronation
(Lesky, 1970).
As the Austrian philologist Albin Lesky says (1970), Sophocles is considered a man rooted
in tradition and in most of his works he maintains a close relationship with the cult to their
homeland. It is curious to find out that a part of the author’s life was followed by tragic
events, witnessing the destruction of his own town and contemplating the moderate growth
of Athens, a city that by his time had been forgotten by the grace of the Olympus. It wasn’t
until his adult life that the city accomplished the artistic, political and administrative
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developments of his period (p. 122). In the way that he captures a semblance of his town,
we find out how bound up he was tied to his roots, to the city that he had lived and written
for. His trilogy Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone are full of devotion of
their homeland by the main characters and are based mainly in the man himself, a man
who works by the impulse of ideas and passions.
After releasing Thebes from the collision of the Sphinx Oedipus gain a status of hero that
positions him at the top of his accomplishments and as heir of the throne by destiny. In
agreement in the precepts about the archetype of hero, he is a well gifted, nobleman who
saves his people with his skilled intelligence and wants to find redemption for their
salvation. In Oedipus King this main character wants to remain redeemer of his people no
matter its price. With his noble actions as the main character it is easy being identified with
his personal attributes which makes him a moral and sympathetic man. Oedipus does
everything possible to bring the salvation to the city but consequently brings ruin and
disaster, he is innocent and guilty at the same time, is the hero and the enemy of the
country (Lucas, 1997).
But the real conflict in Oedipus is that he can not change his fortune as punishment for
being parricide and incestuous. These two characteristics float in the tragic atmosphere and
condemn the main character that is innocent from the view of morality and his only guilty is
the disposition to find out the truth about his mysterious and fatidic past which makes death
and tragedy the price to pay. Oedipus human will against his tragic fate makes this
character one of the perfect examples of tragic heroes in the Ancient Greece (Lucas, 1997).
The antecedents of killing his father with bare hands and marriage with his mother are the
decisive facts that make this work one of the most perfect tragic analysis of its time.
Oedipus can only accept his tragic destiny as result of those unexpected events that he
could not control or struggle against. This ongoing struggle against tragic forces often leads
to a deepening of suffering which in some cases and eventually causes death. Oedipus’
faith and loss of its all are one the best examples of an authentic tragic end.
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2.2 Hamlet “a tragedy of revenge”
“To be or not to be” is perhaps one of the most recognizable citations by the English
playwright William Shakespeare. Thoughtful maybe as one of the most important playwright
of all times (Wofford, 1994) in the Occident world. Shakespeare’s works brought him fame
because he handled themes such as feelings, pain and ambitions of the human soul. Some
consider his tragedies as his most significant contributions because they overstepped the
barriers of time to live forever as reference. His most known tragedies Macbeth, King Lear
or Romeo and Juliet are still analyzed and performed. His famous Hamlet possibly the best
play ever written is one of the most complicated and controversial due to its philosophical,
political and psychoanalytical points of view (Hayland, 1996).
Basing the plot from a collection of stories and historic events (Wofford, 1994),
Shakespeare centers his tragedy on the main character Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, son
of the recently deceased King Hamlet and nephew of King Claudius, his father’s brother
and successor and new husband of King’s Hamlet widow, Gertrude. Prince Hamlet is
convinced that he sees the ghost of his father that tells him that Claudius was his murderer
and that Hamlet must revenge his death. Due to this event Hamlet is tormented by
melancholy, suspicion and his apparent madness, and starts a plot against his uncle in
order to find the truth. Convinced by the words of his father’s ghost Hamlet stages a play reacting how his father dead in hands of his uncle. Furthermore, Hamlet accidentally kills the
father of his beloved Ophelia and chief counselor; driven mad by his death she drowns
herself in the river. Ophelia’s brother Laertes and Claudius assemble a plot against Hamlet.
In a duel Laertes pierces Hamlet with a poisoned blade but is fatally wounded by it himself.
Gertrude accidentally drinks a poisoned wine that was intended for Hamlet and she dies. In
his last minutes Laertes reveals Claudius’s murderous plot. In his own last moments Hamlet
manages to kill his uncle and accomplishes his father’s will.
In most of the drama the importance that Shakespeare gives to Hamlet is basically in trying
to emphasize his weak points and strengths based on external pressures. The greatest
attributes describing him as the hero of the story is the fact that he is the prince, heir and
avenger of his family context. As presumably real heir of Denmark, he has to struggle with
his thoughts to find redemption to his people, to his country and his family.
The
circumstances throughout the plot make this leading character someone who is easy to feel
empathy for his well-intended consciousness of his around and how this noble man fights in
20
trying to separate his moral outrage from his political ambitions. Even though he looks like a
man that can not make up his mind, he is indeed the most intelligent character and makes
his desire of revenge, sanguine humor and unnatural melancholy filled by passion, his most
important attributes (Campbell, 1986, p. 110). The thing about this Shakespeare’s tragic
hero is that he is not perfect and easily can fall intro disgrace because of his weakness of
mind and soul. At the beginning of the play the sorrow lies mainly in the way how he deals
with the death of his father and new marriage of his mother but as the plot continues his
grief turns to anger and indignation.
The loss of his father, lunacy and manipulative characters are the elements that cause
vicissitudes that lead to the hero’s downfall. The consequence of all the tragic events
throughout the story triggers devastation but not eternal damnation for all the characters,
not to mention the aura of darkness and suspicion that follows the whole drama (Campbell,
1986, p. 147). His unique guilty is to succeed the desire of revenge that dictates his father’s
soul, and questioning his mental health will be perhaps one of the biggest unknowns. Is he
really watching his father’s ghost or is he really demented?
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2.3 The Sun Also Rises “a tragedy of maleness”
As the years passed away literature works about tragic heroes changed in multiple ways.
The previous notion about them was in the past as heritage of the most famous tragic
authors. At the beginning of the twentieth century in America the new types of heroes were
molded by the impact of the Great War and the void that left in those years.
“The Lost Generation” was a group of all American writers that after the Great War left their
native land and migrated to Europe in search of a proper atmosphere to develop their
talent. Among them was Ernest Hemingway, American author and journalist who, according
to the scholar Conn (1989), is famous for his understated style and strong influence on the
fiction of his epoch. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s first novel, was published in 1926
and is considered probable his finest work, based in his trip to Spain in 1925 (p. 354).
The novel tells the plot about a group of people who travel from Paris to the Festival of San
Fermín in Pamplona but mainly narrates the love story between Jake Barnes, a man who
suffered a war wound that left him impotent, and Lady Brett Ashley, a divorced and
promiscuous woman that represents the new sexual freedom of the 1920s. Jake is joined
with his friend Bill and Brett’s fiancé Mike who arrives from Scotland. During these days in
Pamplona it will be many starring Brett love problems involving her fiancé, Robert Cohn
(Jake’s best friend) and Pedro Romero, a promising bullfighter. After some days filled with
heavy drinking, partying and passionate issues, the group dissolves and everyone takes
their own way.
In his book Hemingway deals with themes such as love, its dissolution and frustration, but
principally the nature of masculinity and gender. Jake Barnes is a great example of tragic
hero in twentieth century literature, a man who despite his condition tries to manage the
situation but fails in his attempt. He is an unusual hero without any characteristic which can
excuse him. His passive attitude about life, the self-recognition about his masculinity
limitations and his constantly troubled way for standing out from the others are one of his
main features that definitely are not the same as the ancient precept about a real hero.
Disciplined, restrained and laconic, he is a hero that is not intended to be one (Meyers,
1985, p. 460). In this personage is evident that Hemingway broke the lines and patterns of
a redemptive hero for modeling him as a man damaged and ruined by the facts of his
surroundings. His disability caused by the First World War, despite being a reflection of the
time (Meyers, 1985) is an obstacle to live a full romance with the woman he loves due to a
22
tragic event that he did not have any control. They know that they have no chance for a
stable relationship, and the only thing he can do is endure his particular situation about a
love conditioned on the importance of his manhood that has been emasculated. Throughout
the story his sense of unproductiveness because of this problem makes the main character
dull and in need to be highlighted. In most of cases he has to share his prominence with the
antagonistic characters which constantly are exposing them to danger, executing great
feats and women can not resist to them as the case of the young bullfighter Pedro Romero
(Pascual, 2001, p. 30). Moreover, he has to deal with the attitude of the heroine Brett
Ashley, a woman that makes tense the relationship of the group because of the love
triangle that creates jealousy between all of them.
Though The Sun Also Rises may not be linked to the ancient precepts of dramas its
realistic fatal prose makes its tragic hero a character that was easier to be identified to the
pities and calamities that left the impact of the war in that time (Conn, 1989). In the
twenties, the circumstances that involved the personages were more ordinary than in the
Greek and Shakespearian dramas. In the way he finishes the story in a talking between
Jake and Brett about the things that might have been; he informs the reader that the
protagonist will not have a solution to his problem. For the author, killing his main character
to make him a tragic hero was not essential. In fact there is not merely a catastrophic end
comparing with Oedipus and Hamlet but Jake is a character that tragedy will follow for the
rest of his life.
Hemingway contributed to the construction of a modern archetype that was based on the
reality of living between wars, melancholy and misfortune were the most representative
qualities of the works of the decade. This new wave of writings were distinguished by being
a detailed descriptions of usual events, based mostly on Hemingway’s life, unlike his
partner and friend Francis Scott Fitzgerald by whom he felt great admiration, but he did not
share their mundane and refined tastes, that were the other side of the twenties.
23
Chapter 3: The Ironic tragedy of things in “The Jazz Age”
Either called “The roaring twenties”, “The Jazz Age” or the “The Generation of Charleston”,
the twenties incarnate the beginning of modern America that had been grown increasingly
urban throughout the nineteenth or early twentieth century. At this term American society
had reached a turning point of undeniable cultural significance (Conn, 1989) that is well
known for its style, consumerism and writing. By 1918 the First World War ended shaping
the attitudes of the people of that time. The writers who took part of this movement felt that
their language had been stolen from them, this new wave of young authors were great
voices specialist in anguish and sadness. Close to 1920 and 1921 began the first wills of
contemporary rebellion of this young, sad and disappointed but brilliant generation of
writers best known as “The Lost Generation” (Kazin, 1993). “You are all a lost generation”
said Gertrude Stein in one of her interminable monologues to Ernest Hemingway (Mizener,
1962, p.73). She gave this name to the group of writers who appeared in the scene after
The Great War. This group of people including Stein, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, John
Dos Passos, the poets Ezra Pound and e.e cummings among others, believed with
conviction that their process of writing will be major, writing directly out of American
experience; some of them migrated to Europe to discover new ways and sources of
inspiration. American social attitudes, arguments between the past and the future, between
history and hope, the criticism of the conventional life, romantic idealism and senses of
greatness were very significant in the works of those years.
Between 1838 and 1918 was for the American historian Henry Adams (Kazin, 1987) the
period of literary creation of more expansion and more memorable that lived the history of
the Occident. Beginning with the transcendental idealists such as Emerson, Thoreau,
Whitman and the great novelists Hawthorne, Poe, Melville to the era that includes the great
realistic novelists of the period between the Great War and Civil War: Twain, James, Crane,
Dreiser. The last age includes the poets, novelists and modernist critics such as Eliot,
Pound, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Dos Passos. The heirs of modernism and spokesmen
of their epoch felt that they were betrayed by the shades of violence of that time and were
molded by the disenchantment of society. Even though the disillusions of the age were
notably managed in their novels and at some point exhaustingly preoccupied, most of these
creations were filled with a kind of American optimism. It is not despair but hope the
creation of dishonest, stupid and selfish characters whose main problem lie in how to fulfill
the high standards of life and the realities that come with it. The novels by Dos Passos,
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Hemingway and Fitzgerald were highly famous by their time. Each of these writers had a
distinctive voice of his own and a distinctive subject of matter (Mizener, 1962). The most
famous attribute of this generation of writers is the simplicity in how they tell the truth, the
private, inner truth about their own American experience; the barbaric and savage style of
Dos Passos questioning the meaning about life was very different from Hemingway’s
naturalistic novels and his characters filled with despair and sense of existential obligation
(Conn, 1989).
Nevertheless, none of the novelists of the lost generation was as gifted as the great giants
of the nineteenth century (Mizener, 1962), not even Scott Fitzgerald, the greatest post-war
phenomenon who gave the name “The Jazz Age” (Conn, 1989, p.388) to the twenties.
Fitzgerald was maybe the most sensitive to the changes and tensions between the old
America and the new America. He was the consummate representative figure of the
twenties, handsome, spendthrift, hard drinking, boyish and at the same time ironic, resilient
and passionately. Numerous of Fitzgerald novels represent his celebration of youth of the
decade. His characters always portrayed a hopeful reflection of his ambition of reinventing
himself, using his life as material for his fiction, Fitzgerald’s tragic rise and fall was the most
representative quality about his tragic heroes.
25
3.1 Francis Scott Fitzgerald: life and works of tragic heroes
“I want to be one of the greatest writers that ever lived, don’t you?” said in 1916 an
undergraduate Fitzgerald to his fellow at University. Though his remark was almost
ludicrously brash, by words of his biographer Arthur Mizener (1962), it was quite serious.
Young men with Fitzgerald’s feeling for the possibilities of American experience suddenly
appeared in all parts of the United States in the early 20’s (p. 57). The spirit of standing out
in a society that was increasingly growing boosted the desire of hopeful people as Scott
Fitzgerald, with their own personal growth.
Ironic, insolent and sentimental, he was the personification of modernism and the reckless
spirit of the roaring twenties represented by parties, short skirts, a frenetic interest in sports,
sex, drinking forbidden liquor and defying old traditions (Shein, 1963). These themes were
major topics in the process of all his writings, in most of cases Scott was the novel’s hero
and Zelda, his wife, was the heroine, the classic flapper girl who, according to Fitzgerald,
was a lovely, rebel, independent woman who was attracted to expensive things, smoked,
drank and danced to the rhythm of jazz music. With his first novel Fitzgerald announced
him as part of the postwar scandal and as a symbol of the international youth rebellion of
war. His first work This Side of Paradise narrates the story about a promising handsome
hero, a Princeton student who tries to find the sense in his life and falls in love. His later
works Flappers and philosophers, The Beautiful and Damned and Tales of the Jazz Age,
were a testimony of the young generation and the illusions and morality of post- World War
I, social differences, envious comparisons and the hero’s personal sense of experience that
was a mirror of his personal life frequently amazed by the courage and the rashness of the
heroine which made him being recognized as “The Jazz Age author” (Mclnerney, 2013).
At the beginning of twenties Scott and Zelda were at the edge of squandering. This part of
their life was highly represented in the pages of his writings, mainly the parties and their
excessive use of alcohol, moreover by those years the relationship between them was
tearing apart and they moved to Europe. Fitzgerald felt that America had given away his
youth, illusions and his desperate lovely days with Zelda. This inspired him to write The
Great Gatsby, a novel that was a reflection of the American dream of those years, the loss
of American illusions, the obsessive idea of recovering the past and the idea that anyone
can reinvent himself, a mix of love and money and the fierce energy of the tragic hero’s
romantic impulse. After The Great Gatsby, properly received by the audience of but not as
26
a best-seller, he wrote many short stories based once again on his adolescence and youth,
but his reputation began to decline in a way that he could not recover again.
At the opening thirties the only thing he knew was his own shattered life after the
schizophrenic disease of his wife. He began to write stories that served as self-justification
and self-accusation such as Tender is the Night, a pessimistic love story about the sacrifice
and devotion of the tragic hero to the heroine as a foolish submission of the soul (Shein,
1963, p.146). Between 1934 and 1937 his life sank into a state of collapse but he recovers
and signs a contract to work in Hollywood, the place where he writes his last work The Love
of the last Tycoon, a plot that represents the tragic hero as a more conceived and objective
character than the first Fitzgerald’s novels, a main character who is attempting to become a
symbol of American greatness but dies so slowly and brilliantly throughout the book as
Fitzgerald did in his life (Shein, 1963). Fitzgerald characters are notable related to his own
tragic sense about life, based on the most shocking moments in his road to become a
successful writer. All his personages at some part of their stories find a confrontation of an
election that will change their life course and how to take the best part of it. The problem to
understand tragic characters (Vernant, 2002) is to comprehend how all their tragic features
combined, create a unique human fact and invention which appears in history as a social
reality, as institution, as aesthetic creation, as a coming of a new literary genre, as
psychological mutation, the suffering of the conscience of the tragic man. These
investigations suppose a constant confrontation between the modern concepts and
categories established in ancient tragedies (p. 13).
By 1922, literature was bursting with new realistic elements associated with writers’
lifestyle. The pseudo-realistic style and works of those years make these heroes more
adaptable to any modern human being; other scholars also think that the conception of
traditional heroes is inadequate and that there is no place for that definition in society and
literature nowadays. Just as Fitzgerald’s biographer Mizener declared (1962), the author
tried to extend this method in all his heroes and perhaps came close to overextending it. To
begin with, he makes his hero much more idealistic than Hemingway’s about the
possibilities of the personal life, so idealistic that he has no capacity for irony at all. The
typical heroes of the beginning of twentieth century were centralized in this common
parallelism between the author’s personal experiences and adventures. Fitzgerald writings
are a manifestation of how his characters are defeated by a society which has not fulfilled
an optimistic point of view; even in his second novel The Beautiful and Damned he makes a
27
clear critique about the new transitions of literature when he writes “I’m sick of all this
shoddy realism. I think there’s a place for the romanticist in literature” (Fitzgerald, 1922, p.
345).
28
3.2 The Beautiful and Damned: tragedy and heroism
Fitzgerald second novel The Beautiful and Damned represents a dramatic story that directs
the plot of its main characters Anthony and Gloria, a socialite marriage couple, to nowhere.
Published on March 2, 1922, though it had very well critics and was properly received by
the audience, it was not good enough as Fitzgerald’s first novel This Side of Paradise.
Contemplated as a novel of moods rather than characters (Shein, 1963) it explores the life
of Eastern elite, known as Café Society in New York. The Beautiful and Damned is a social
document about the authors’ best years and the beginning of his relationship with Zelda
Fitzgerald. According to the same Fitzgerald, it is a drama about the main personage
Anthony Patch, between his 25 and 33, a man who has taste and weaknesses of an artist
without real creative power. It narrates how this socialité and his lovely wife rest quietly in
the pitfall of dissipation.
Anthony’s story begins after University and his trip to Rome,
devoted to the contemplation of beauty, when he falls in love with Gloria in his nightlife in
New York. His reality is based as happens on all Fitzgerald’s heroes in the expression of a
strong romantic desire (Shein, 1963, p. 133). After they get married, he invests all his life
and energies in seeing his wife Gloria happy and this is how he started a life filled with too
much luxury, squandering and exhaustiveness.
To start analyzing and comprehend Fitzgerald’s main characters it is determining to inquire
about the real notion of heroes in literature; moreover, it is equally important to refer to its
antonym. In literature a hero is considered the main male figure of the story. Beginning with
the connotative definition about a hero, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (2013), a
hero is the main noble character with good qualities, who accomplishes a series of
outstanding achievements. In concordance with Steiner (1991), a hero can be considered
as tragic because his noble characteristics make him more prone to obscure sources of life
than the ordinary human being, but at the same time is typical, which qualifies his fall as
exemplary. Otherwise an antihero is a main character with negative attributes and unethical
characteristics by which we remember the classical hero and at the same time he may
arouse the repulsion and mockery of the audience (Gonzáles, 1981, p. 373).
29
Anthony Patch with no record of achievement, without courage, without strength to
satisfied with truth when it was given him. Oh he was a pretentious fool, making
careers out of cocktails and meanwhile regretting, weakly and secretly, the collapse
of an insufficient and wretched idealism. He was empty, it seemed, empty as an old
bottle (1922, p. 49).
The main inquiring about the young aristocrat Anthony is how all his characteristics makes
him more prone to be considered an antihero. Patch, who is described just as an image of
the same Fitzgerald, lost all the qualities that note him as a heroic figure. At the beginning
of the novel, the narrator refers about Anthony:
Not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated,
contemptuous, functioning from within outward; a man who was aware that there
could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet
was brave (1922, p. 1).
Fitzgerald considered Anthony as an innovative hero more prone to failure. As a human
hero who can easily commit mistakes and has a tragic faith. Nevertheless, this main
character who does not have any distinctive attribute apart from his cynicism and his sharp
sensitivity, is considered a hero, colluding with Vernant (2002) Anthony lives a struggle
against his own tragedy, the tragedy of living with limited money to continue with his
indulgence style of living. Anthony’s behavior was justified by his sentiment of obtaining
something that is out of his limits, thinking always in present but never in an attainable
future. His gradual loss of his mental curiosity, his gradual degradation into bleak and
sordid wreck is convincingly depicted:
Anthony Patch ceased to be an individual of mental adventure, of curiosity and had
become an individual of bias and prejudice, with a longing to be emotionally
disturbed” (1922, p. 236).
The virtues of this tragic character are conditioned in his suffering in agreement to the
medieval definition about tragedy that Steiner refers (1991) as a narrative that tells a
story of some ancient or eminent character who suffers a decline of fortune to come to a
disastrous end. The proper motion of tragedies is the decline from prosperity to the
suffering and chaos (p. 15). Just as the novel starts with the excitement and fulfillment of
the opening of the Roaring twenties, the drunker parties, the flappers, the extravagances
30
and excesses of a promising decade but as the plot goes on, there is a lack of purpose in
the life of every personage, no one of the book’s many characters ever rises to the level
of ordinary decent humanity. Even Anthony’s best friend Maury, deserts Anthony at the
end of the story when he finds out this his friend became an incurable alcoholic. The only
spark of loyalty is seen at the end of the story when Dick Caramel, although he was
always overestimated by Anthony, helps his cousin Gloria to the end. The novel does not
attribute any guilt to the nature of things and the injustices of society and their
misfortunes are devoid of moral background. These aspects of the story are associated
with the fact that in tragic stories there are no explanations or mercy, the misfortunes are
absurd and inevitable and the punishment is beyond guilty (Steiner, 1991, p. 15).
Considering the quality of calamities and disastrous events that surround the characters
it is coherent having as a result a tragic novel based on the definition of tragedy by
Aristotle (1974). He declares that drama is a series of events through fear and
compassion, they occur with more intensity when they are represented against
something unexpected, achieve the purgation of these affections by the recognition of
something that was previously ignored (p. 145).
On the other hand, his lovely wife Gloria, a beauty-incarnate completely insolent and selfish
woman shares as well as Anthony the sense of arrogance, irresponsibility, and hedonism
which leads them to their leisurely breakdown. The main object about heroism in tragedies
(Vernant, 2002) lies in the debate that the character lives, forced to make a decisive choice
to direct his action in a universe of ambiguous values, where nothing is ever stable nor
unique (p. 20); The Beautiful and Damned is a novel that centers its characters in avoiding
their mission in life, throughout the story the characters are always finding an excuse for
making something useful about them and avoiding the searching of their vocation.
Anthony’s unique vocation is waiting for something that is out of reach of him:
Listlessly Anthony dropped into a chair, his mind tired- tired with nothing, tired with
everything, with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear. One of those
personalities who, in spite of all their words, are inarticulate, he seemed to have
inherited only the vast tradition of human failure and the sense of death.” (1922, p.
179).
31
Gloria’s vocation on the other way is only being attractive:
The reality, the earthiness, the intolerable sentiment of child-bearing, the menace to her
beauty- had appalled her. She wanted to exist only as a conscious flower, prolonging
and preserving itself” (1922, p. 321).
Tragedy presents characters in their position to act: the situation at the crossroad of a
decision that commits them completely and inquiring themselves on how to take the best
selection (2002, p.40). Nor Anthony or Gloria make a real decision that affects their state of
comfort, the only thing they do is spending a lot of time in dialogues with their friends
questioning about their real purpose in life. In the novel their lifestyle take a turning point
when Anthony and Gloria discern that their codependency feelings go beyond their love.
Another important fact about tragedies is when the characters are willing to tempt the future
as a kind of gamble on the fate and themselves (Vernant, 2002); even though Anthony and
Gloria are unwilling to find their vocation in life, they persist in the way of self-destruction
with affairs, alcoholic problems and extravagances rather than being middle class workers:
Oh, what did it matter? This night, this glow, the cessation of anxiety and the sense
that if living was not purposeful it was, at any rate, essentially romantic! Wine gave
a sort of gallantry to their own failure.” (1922, p. 253)
This is how their loveliness and good looking commence to vanish into the air as a result of
all that wasted time as a marriage. At the last term of the novel when the sense of self-pity
had grown in the minds of the characters and their existence without hope and happiness
started to oppress them they really start to suffer:
It is a truth set at the heart of tragedy that this force never explains, never
answers—this force intangible as air, more definite than death” (1922, p. 339).
Acknowledging Steiner’s (1991) conception about tragic characters in how they can not just
take compensation for all the suffering throughout the novel because any realistic
conception of this kind of events must have as its starting point the fact of catastrophe, the
tragic character is destroyed by forces that can not be fully understood or defeated by
rational prudence because tragedies are incorrigible (p. 13). At the end of the story Anthony
and Gloria fall from the highest and most desirable position to the deepest endless burrow.
Their own tragic fortunes are provided with their absence of effort during the entire novel.
The vicissitudes from the beginning of their marriage to the recognition of their own
32
suffering, squandering and waste of time and beauty are very likeable about the Aristotle’s
(1971) conclusion of tragedies about the recognition of something that was previously
ignored.
Alcoholic Anthony’s manners sank him into a state of collapse that he could not recover
again, leaving him alone without any support, not even from his discontented wife who
leaves him to die alone physically and spiritually. Anthony’s tragic end can be adaptable to
Vernant’s definition (2002) about the tragic moment, in which through the social experience
the heart opens a breach as long enough to get the legal and political thoughts on the one
hand, the mythical and heroic traditions on the other and clearly outlining the oppositions,
but mild enough at once to that the conflicts of value still feel painfully and the confrontation
will continue to execute (p. 21). The condition of Anthony as a tragic hero is the fact that his
noble characteristics, the quality of his adversities, his disposition to act in a crossroad
decision and his hopeless and catastrophic end made him more disposed to his noble
transgression to obscure sources of life rather than an ordinary character. This individual
personage, which forms the center of the action and drama that looks like a hero of the
past, has to confront heroic values and ancient tragic models, with new modes of thought
(Vernant, 2002).
A proper analysis of heroes in worldwide literature goes beyond time and culture and
polysemic barriers (Gonzáles, 1981), not to mention the categories of daily common use
that are multiple and imprecise. The degradation of the archaic sense of heroes in the
ethical principles has completely blurred over the years. Owing to this, we have as a result
the terms of hero/antihero as category that comes in pair in the purpose of finding the
proper attributes that describe the young Patch. There are considerable aspects in
Fitzgerald’s second novel that make this searching apprehend that the unfortunate events
and behavior of the characters are current until these days. His realistic prose makes the
tragic events and the downfall of the heroes more realistic than the Hellenic and
Elizabethan years. The twentieth century is represented by a new type of hero who is trying
to overcome a series of unpleasant events and accomplish acts of heroism during the dark
side of the Jazz Age. The main tragic elements in these heroes are pointlessness, waste
and avoidance of effort which is represented by a typical couple from the twenties, a couple
which matched in their extravagance, their emotional neediness and arrested adulthood
and in the premonitory desperation that darkened their earliest joy, just the same as Scott
and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald.
33
Despite the unequal reception by critics the novel had a good commercial success; in fact
for most of the readers the novel had a blurred purpose due to the fact that the author never
finished developing any of its characters throughout history. A review from the New Yorker
(1922) scored the novel as full of that kind of pseudo-realism which results from shutting
one's eyes to all that is good in human nature. The accomplishment of The Beautiful and
Damned was due in part to the rumor that it was an autobiographical novel, which it was
true in some aspects. Even Zelda recognized some lines from his diary in the novel to
which she replied "Mr. Fitzgerald … seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home”
(Green, 2013).
34
3.3 Is Anthony Patch a reinvention of a tragic hero?
It is fair to analyze Anthony as far as he could analyze himself; further than that it is,
of course, presumption (1922, p. 46).
Analyzing Anthony as far as I could in this paper, I have found that he is not the likeable
hero compared with other protagonists. This research postulates Anthony Patch as a tragic
character but not as a classical hero. Nevertheless I can not postulate him either as an
antihero. The positive moral attitude of a real hero is what makes him always win in terms
what is ethically correct. In Anthony it was impossible to find a decent attribute that
described him as a person worthy of admiration. If we take into account all the peculiarities
that surround the young Patch and his qualities apply them to the classical definition about
heroism (Crescenzo, 1995) that declares the heroes as the most important characters of
the classical world because of his physical strength and his courage, we will found that
Anthony Patch in fact, has not good qualities, has no record of outstanding achievement
and his only qualification is his noble title inherited by his family and lost at some point of
the story, due to his greedy and selfish ways of living.
Aristotle (1971) reveals that tragic heroes are such according to their personalities, but
happy or otherwise, according to their actions; without actions there is no tragedy, the facts
are the aim of tragedies and the aim is the principal of all. The Greek philosopher also
refers about tragedies in how they lead to a torn conscience, sense of the contradictions
that divide man against himself, look at what plane are located, their content and in what
conditions they have seen the light. This pretentious fool lives in a collapse of inefficiency
that makes him feel empty when someone rejects him. When he falls in love, he thinks he
really falls in love but it is just simply the act of obtaining what he wants when he wants; in
this case Gloria is only an instrument of Anthony’s codependency who at times he loves
and at times he hates. At this point of the story the meaning of life of the main characters is
overshadowed by a sense of tragedy which follows them for the rest of the plot where the
pities of Anthony and Gloria reach to the point of despair most of times but none of them do
anything to mending it and the author only keeps them suffering.
As he grew drunker the dreams faded and he became a confused spectre, moving
in odd crannies of his own mind, full of unexpected devices, harshly contemptuous
at best and reaching sodden and dispirited depths (1922, p. 319).
35
This type of suffering he adapts to the definition about tragedy which narrates the life of an
eminent character who suffered a dwindling fortune to come to a disastrous end which
defines the fall of the individual greatness (Steiner, 1991, p.15). Anthony’s alcohol abuse is
maybe the best word for describing the core of his life. In only fourteen years the author had
hit rock bottom, became a broken, alcoholic man who lived in a cheap hotel while his wife
suffered from schizophrenia. Once again, the parallelism between Fitzgerald and his stories
acted as ominous damnation and condemnation of his own life. It is so ruthlessly used
himself in his fiction, that there is often a complete fusion between his life and his stories
(Shein, 1963).
With Anthony, Fitzgerald assumed that if we realize in some detail the sensitivity of a man,
it has managed to make the finish of a tragic character study (Field, 1922). But what had to
learn Fitzgerald from a society that he both enjoyed and despised at the same time? What
had to learn Anthony from that? Anthony maybe survived to the adversities that happened
to him and his wife but he could not make use of it to have a redemptive end to his abusive
manners and ways of living. His condition of a tragic character is the best excuse to
discover why he could not act in different way; the world is too much pessimistic for him that
it does not even deserve his best effort in anything that can fulfill his happiness. Anthony’s
life if not even lived in its fullness. Always complaining about everything and living in a
utopian world where alcohol is the only reality. His utter destruction is finally at the end of
the story when he is abandoned in misery as an incurable heavy drinker; spiritually he had
died of abandonment, desolation and weariness just the same as Fitzgerald did.
Thus, as I can observe about Anthony is how all his features make me to consider in the
renewal of tragic heroes. The conception of heroism has reassembled all over the years
since humankind has become selfish in numerous ways. Nowadays there is a lack of
human values that decrease or suspected about heroism, what makes humanity is to
highlight and raise the values of these personages above the average level of society
despite the multiple ideologies of the epoch. According to this research, Anthony Patch can
be categorized as a modern hero, who was born as a result of the transitions of the century;
the problematic, selfish hero who fights for his own convictions and does not depend on
others to achieve something important. In Anthony we find out how Fitzgerald was
conscious of this new wave of tragic figures that were conditioned by their actions that
redeemed themselves or not as figure of respect. This is what I loved most of this novel,
while I was reading the plot and the characters made me analyze in notion about heroism,
36
tragic heroes and antiheroes. I certainly believe that this work is underestimated as a result
of its characters without any purpose in life and without any teaching. I am conceived that
these kinds of personages were the result of a vigorous reawakening of an American postwar society based on imperfection, guilt and tragedy of human experience. This peculiar
thoughts redefined the first decades of the twentieth century, a plentiful of Anthonys and
Glorias gained attention for as a result of their lack of interest to stand out in any aspect of
their lives, or the fact that they get a great deal from life as a wayward souls who did not
care about tomorrow and its consequences. A ‘state of mind’ that Fitzgerald proposed more
than eighty years ago and is still current until today in life, literature, movies or even turning
up the T.V.
37
Conclusion
As a conclusion it is impossible to establish a categorical solution to the problems of
different perceptions and models about tragic heroes. By doing this research, I discovered
that tragedy and heroes are not just merely related with mythology, but have changed
throughout the years according to the time of speech and place. The main purpose of this
paper was to apply the tragic hero archetype from Ancient Greece and Renaissance, to the
main character, Anthony Patch, to discover if this personage was a hero or an antihero.
In order to illustrate different archetypes of tragic heroes it was necessary to put as
example main characters that I considered as the most emblematic of three representative
periods. To begin with the Greek model of heroes described as a great man who has all the
characteristics to find the redemption for achieving great heroic deeds. By those years, a
hero represented: spirit, vigour, talent, fearless, courage and is physically perfect. On the
other hand, by the English Renaissance tragic heroes were characters who dealt, once
again, with themes such as royalty, revenge and ambitions of the human soul. However, in
the literature of the twentieth century, a hero is faced with issues such as the nature of
masculinity and gender, and social indifferences as a reflection of the time of speech.
Hemingway’s character Jake Barnes centers his tragedy around the futility of his body and
masculinity and how he has to deal with it to not look like as a complete failure. On the
other hand, we have his colleague Anthony Patch, described just as a reflection of the
same Scott Fitzgerald, a man who in the early modern literature lost all the qualities that
note him as a heroic figure.
As a result of an overview through the different types of heroes that has changed the
ancient precept of heroism; I believe there is no solution to stipulate only one archetype of a
hero in history. This figure is in constant evolution which allowed different conceptions and
interpretations all over the years. Though, this is my own perception, I believe that there are
some people as me who believed that heroism lies in the fact of redemption of the soul by
performing something positive for the world, which is totally inaccurate. As a conclusion I
agree with the fact that in the new context of tragedies, the hero has ceased to be a model,
the modern hero has become for himself and for others a problem (Vernant, 2002, p. 19).
Nevertheless, to achieve the goal of this capstone essay was very complicated because
there were few studies in English about tragedy and heroes at my disposal. This is why I
think it is very important to propose new literary researches in English, even though
38
literature is not the main object of study of my B.A. I consider that the influence of United
States to Mexico not only depends on celebrities, customs, food or fashion but also on
literature as one of the best ways to get closer to American literature, improve our English
skills and be learned in American culture as well.
And last but not least, another purpose of this paper was to promote the importance of
American writers in general, but especially of Scott Fitzgerald. United States lived the most
wonderful and splendid literary years represented by poets, essayists, novelists, short story
writers and historians between 1830 to 1930 (Kazin, 1987) but after The Depression began
an era of social criticism that gain rise after the Second World War which arouse some of
the most popular and influential works in American history. America’s golden boy Francis
Scott Fitzgerald lived in the restless and rebellious years of a country that were
characterized by the golden dreams of a post-war melancholic atmosphere, a man who
made a lot of contributions to the Modern American Literature, due to his tragic writings.
Considered the historian of a generation (Kazin, 1993) and for a long time the most
important national voice, the legend of his life was the most central story. Most of his novels
and short stories are illustrated with a tragic character full of a passionate feeling of
becoming a romantic idealistic figure and the obsessive idea of reinventing himself. I
consider The Beautiful and Damned as Fitzgerald’s most overshadowed work, but at the
same time the most delightful. Its characters and plot are still current until these days
although all the transitions and changes in life and literature. By the nascence of the
twentieth century heroes became not only those who do charity or saved others, even
movie stars, athletes, scientists or dancers became people of admiration. The main
personage Anthony is depicted as a pathetic character that became a modern stereotype of
tragic hero. I believe heroism is merely a subjective matter, based on the time of speech
that has been deformed by the loss of values. With this paper I prove that Anthony and
Gloria were a different example of selfish heroes of their own tragedy who fought for their
own conviction and did not have redemption. Salvation was not for that new wave of tragic
heroes, redemptive endings have been left behind, in a society that believed in justification
of pain, not in the times of Fitzgerald.
39
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