When writing a tragic hero for a tragedy, do the readers have to sympathize with the characters?

Question

I've been told that a tragic hero is a protagonist with a tragic flaw or a character defect that ultimately leads to their downfall and that the audience should sympathize with the character, even as they recognize their flaws.

I am wondering if it's ok if the audience doesn't sympathize with the character. I have a character who is extremely evil and unlikeable, an anti-hero type, so I am wondering if that's ok. I've seen a lot of people experimenting with genre and archetypes, and I was wondering if it's possible to write an effective tragedy with an unlikeable tragic hero who people can't sympathize with.

Answer 1

I have a character who is extremely evil and unlikeable, ...

How did he get that way? I doubt that he was born evil and unlikable: the tragedy could be the way that someone who is initially OK gradually becomes warped. Macbeth is a brave, successful general, but, by the end of Act 1 he has been persuaded to murder his patron and frame two innocent servants. If Shakespeare had skipped the material from Act 1 we'd just have the evil and unlikable protagonist you describe. I suggest that you focus on how to warp his character.

Answer 2

I really doubt that is possible.

Readers (because we are somewhat egotistical) tend to identify with the protagonist, or at least with one of the "main crew."

Even with a tragic flaw, I don't think we will identify with an evil character. Hero or not.

We can identify with a flawed hero, like a drug addict, or an autistic and emotionally distant hero (as in "The Accountant"), but in the end the autistic Accountant, despite working for mobsters and criminals, is still the Good bad guy, risking his life to save the innocent girl that he worked beside; with no romantic interest in her whatsoever.

We see the same thing in Léon: The Professional. The hero is a professional hit man, extremely good at his job; we see him working. But he chooses to protect a young innocent girl, saving her, with strictly a fatherly vibe, no sexual interest. (If you've heard there is, you've been lied to.)

You can have ruthless, violent, murderous heroes with flaws, but they have to be clearly doing something altruistically good as the plot of the story. Protecting somebody, setting something right, killing the corrupt, and taking risks they are not at all forced to take.

For me in writing, that is the definition of a hero: They are in the fight to do something altruistically good for others, or for everybody. And they could quit, when they get knocked down or beat up or set back or injured. They are given chances when it would be sensible to quit. But they don't. They get up and go on, despite their losses, even if they think they are likely to fail, because they'd rather die than fail.

Your hero must be doing something the audience can recognize as altruistically good.

Answer 3

There is a difference between a hero and a protagonist. There is a difference between sympathy and empathy. There is a difference between relating to a character and connecting with them. From common thieves, mob bosses, assassins, serial killers and myriad monsters and demons, literature is rife with antiheroes and villainous main characters.

The reader need not approve of the character. The character need not have any redeemable qualities whatsoever. You will need to find other tactics to grab your reader's attention.

Morbid curiosity/Macabre - This is partly why the Sharon Tate murders are still talked about more than fifty years later.

Psychological fascination - Why Hannibal Lecter is so iconic. The character is thoroughly deplorable, and yet still the anchor of the series.

Plot/Arc - Though individual characters may have had some redeeming qualities, The Lannisters were deliciously despicable, as were the Corleones and Tattaglias. Fans loved watching the characters lie, swindle and kill each other.

Negative Illustration - You can make a statement about good (or broader social statement) through depicting evil, viz Alex DeLarge. (Admittedly, this narrative makes use of pretty much all the aforementioned devices, and is a master class of dystopian/antihero theme, but for sake of just a character study is befitting.)

Character Concept - Here again, using any/all the above techniques, you devise a character with an interesting concept that titillates your readers, makes them want to explore what makes the character tick, or indulge in their darkness from the safety of the fourth wall, and this list is nearly endless: Count Dracula, Travis Bickle, Char Aznable, Tyler Durden, ad nauseam (quite literally).

So no, the reader doesn't have to approve of the main character at all. There is a reason Jack the Ripper and Mike Meyers capture fans. There is a difference between an ethically good character and a conceptually good character.

And never underestimate the importance of just good writing.

BTW, the tragedy element is pretty basic IMO: it is what could-have-been. Flashes or hints of virtue appear from beneath the mire, never to be realized or allowed to shine. A character who could be likable, or lovable, or admirable, but through flaw (character-driven) or circumstance (plot-driven), never attains redemption, or love or what-have-you.

I would recommend reading up on some psychology; I personally don't believe in such a thing as pure evil or pure good; we are all faceted. So understanding your character's thinking and motivations (not to mention the psychology/desires of your audience) may help you delve into the mind and nature of your character, and breathe a fuller life into your concept.

Then all you gotta do is write the devil out of it. 3:)

Answer 4

Sure, I can think of several examples --Lolita, The Talented Mr Ripley, and Match Point for tragedies, Young Adult or Youth in Revolt for a more comic take, A Clockwork Orange or Fight Club for less easily categorized examples.

The audience doesn't always need to sympathize with the main character, but they do expect to learn something from the person's journey, which means they need to empathize to at least a limited extent. There's often a moral lesson to be discerned, even if the main character never learns it. In Ripley and Match Point, for example, the MC destroys their own chance at love and happiness. We learn from them that even an unpunished sociopathic life is its own hell. Similarly, the villain/protagonist of Lolita self-destructs, even though he initially seems to have gotten away with his crimes scot-free. Both he, and the narcissistic hero of Young Adult experience a brief moment of moral self-awareness late in the narrative. In all of these cases we can view it, and think to ourselves "If that were me, I would have made better choices."

In both Orange and Fight Club there's something magnetic about the sociopathic central characters. Audiences may neither sympathize nor empathize with them, yet still find something to admire in their struggle to wrest the most out of life, and their opposition to being crushed by the steamroller of the status quo.

Answer 5

In the official tragedy, Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus", the hero isn't exactly likable, but we can respect him. His good points are: being a hero general just back from saving Rome (several times), lost several of his sons in those wars and took it in stride, and he turned down being the emperor. That's pretty much the back-story for every cheesy action hero today -- a modest hero who's made great sacrifices for the nation. We'd like to see the guy live on his farm in peace, even if we wouldn't visit him much.

Then he human sacrifices an enemy in retaliation. That was legal and his right and you can see why he did it, but still ... . He's also such a rigid military man that he won't stand up to the new emperor for his remaining family. And he expects his kids to follow his orders, like modern day military movie dads, and is furious when they won't. He also tricks someone into eating a pie made from their own children, but by that time he's clearly gone mad.

So all-in-all his flaws are pretty bad, but they're still flaws -- he's not Evil. But his enemies are Evil -- four of them who are monsters in different ways. And what happens to him and his family is so much worse than he deserved.

Answer 6

The main protagonist in the short story The Spider’s Thread is a genuinely unlikable character, a murderer and thief, throughout the story. And yet, the reader is subconsciously rooting for him all the time.

How is that achieved? The problem in the question seems to be a semantic one for me. A hero is by definition the character in the story the reader is most interested and invested in. This requires a certain level of sympathy, where sympathy is quite literally the “feeling his feelings” part that keeps the fictional story interesting for the reader.

Akutagawa uses a two-fold trick to make the character approachable. One is a single good deed that he did in the past. This serves then as hook for off-loading the work of feeling sympathy with this character to a god-like Buddha, who appears in the frame story. The reader is then in the position to be invested in the character’s fate without having to know motivations and reasons for the character’s bad acts.

Answer 7

In real life, as well as in Schindler's List and Shindler's Ark: Oskar Schindler.

He was a deeply flawed man. A drunkard, a womanizer, a man willing to become rich out of property stolen from others and forced labour. In most circumstances he would have been fairly detestable.

And yet, there was a moral line he would not cross, which far too many others did. They simply pretended that they didn't know what the Nazis were doing, or "simply followed orders". He put his life on the line to save as many as he could.

Why is the antonym of bad, good, and the antonym of evil, good? And yet bad and evil seem to be two utterly different concepts, and that difference is brought into focus by this man.

Answer 8

Another thing to understand about a tragic flaw in classic tragedy is that the flaw is often one of the very traits that makes the hero successful and heroic. To be a real tragedy, the hero (this can apply to a villian) must rise above others, the higher the better, and subsequently fall, the lower the better, because of the same qualities. I do agree that it is challenging to make the fall of a villain feel like a bad thing. Are you sure you're really meaning to write a tragedy?