Needed: A Tragic Hero

[Geee]

National Review:

Tragic heroes — from Sophocles’ Ajax and Antigone to the Western films’ Shane and Woodrow Call — can be defined in a variety of ways. But the common archetype is a larger-than-life figure. He is endowed with extraordinary gifts and sometimes even more monumental flaws. Fate decrees that even his departure or self-destruction will be memorable.

 

Sometimes the tragic hero suffers from hubris, like know-it-all Oedipus. The goddess Nemesis waits until just the proper moment to tap his arrogance, blind him to the reality around him, and thereby lead him to his own destruction.

 

But note: What separates the tragic hero from the arrogant fool who suffers the same fate is the sheer magnitude of his gifts, and thus the depth of the abyss into which he falls, and the spirit with which he accepts larger cosmic forces at work.

 

At other times, the tragic hero is simultaneously irreplaceable and unfit for the changing world about him. That paradox is a common theme of classic Westerns like High Noon, Lonesome Dove, The Magnificent Seven, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ride the High Country, The Searchers, and Shane. Tragic heroes are throwbacks to a prior, perhaps pre-civilized age (hence the Old West is our version of the pre-Athenian city-state, so fertile for the mythological nature of Greek tragedy).

[righteousmomma]

Great read and so true.

Unfortunately I have seen no sign of one in the current political realms - on either side

Too soon to tell about some and others have caved and bought into the system and others may have disqualifying beginnings.

 

Perhaps as a united nation we should pray 2 Chronicles 7:14 and ask for a tragic hero leader.