Not Aristotle’s Fault

To the Editors:

In his otherwise excellent essay on the “tragic flaw” in Shakespeare’s tragedies [“No Comfort,” NYR, June 6], Fintan O’Toole falls into the all too common trap of attributing this critical idea to Aristotle. But the words Aristotle uses, hamartia and hamartēma, often mistranslated as “flaw,” do not refer to a character’s psychology or mental disposition. Rather, in Aristotle’s usage, these words mean “mistake” or “error.” A tragic protagonist makes a mistake in judgment or perception, and thus sets into motion a whole disastrous train of events that ends in destroying the protagonist him- or herself. A crucial point is that the hamartia is, quite literally, a mistake—it is not a deliberately malicious choice nor is it a psychological “flaw.” Aristotle’s discussion of hamartia is tied closely to his statement that the tragic protagonist must not be either exceptionally good or exceptionally evil, but “in between”: a normal human being, although one in a position of exceptional good fortune who, through an error of judgment or perception, falls into exceptional evil fortune. A key point is that the fall from good to bad fortune is not deserved; it results from the protagonist’s error, not from wickedness or malice.

Mr. O’Toole is undoubtedly correct that the idea of the “fatal flaw” is of very little value in understanding Shakespeare. It is of even less value in understanding Aristotle’s theory of tragedy in Poetics or Greek tragedies themselves. It is past time to abandon this fatally flawed idea.

Elizabeth Vandiver
Clement Biddle Penrose Professor of Latin and Classics, Emerita
Whitman College
Walla Walla, Washington

Fintan O’Toole replies:

Professor Vandiver is quite right to exonerate Aristotle. It is not his fault that hamartia was later used to suggest a sin rather than a mistake or that some English versions of Poetics translate it as a flaw. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary continues to define the word in these moralistic terms: “A flaw in character that brings about the downfall of the hero of a tragedy.” Confusingly, the Oxford English Dictionary hedges its bets: “The fault or error which entails the destruction of the tragic hero.” There is, of course, a great difference in drama between an error—especially one that derives from ignorance—and a fault of character. In this case, however, my loose reference to Aristotle combines elements of both, and I am grateful for Professor Vandiver’s eloquent clarification.