Life Lessons from Literary Tragedies
By Andrew Bernstein
Author’s note: This article contains spoilers for Oedipus the King, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Fountainhead.
Oscar Wilde once remarked that life imitates art. Studying tragedies of great literature can help us ensure that our lives do not imitate such art. Of course, the intense intellectual and emotional experiences invoked by such stories are ends in themselves regardless of any didactic takeaways. Nevertheless, wisdom is priceless, and tragedies often display moral truths that can help us avert a similar fate. They show us the causes of human demise and can thereby guide us away from pernicious and toward felicitous outcomes.
With this in mind, we’ll examine five tragic figures from great literature: Oedipus from Sophocles’s Oedipus the King; Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet from Shakespeare’s eponymous plays; and Gail Wynand from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. I make no claim to exhaustiveness, but, as we’ll see, these five figures and their vivid, brilliantly wrought tragedies offer much to learn.1
Among these stories are many differences; one is ancient, some early modern, and one contemporary. Consequently, the cultures in which these stories were composed—the language, philosophy, religion, and mores—are widely divergent, as are the premises and principles of the authors. We will bear these differences in mind.
We’ll also consider which, if any, of these characters, generally referred to as “tragic heroes,” are heroic at all. Literary analysis is fraught with woozy terms for which we need rigorous definitions. “Tragedy” and “tragic hero” are two such terms.
A hero is an individual of elevated prowess and unyielding rectitude who faces severe impediments and/or opposition in pursuit of life-promoting goals and who triumphs in at least a moral form.2
A serviceable definition of literary tragedy is provided at Dictionary.com: “a dramatic composition . . . dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically involving a great person destined to experience downfall or utter destruction, as through a character flaw or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or an unyielding society.” In accord with this definition, a tragic hero is a grand-scale character brought to demise by an internal flaw and/or pernicious external forces or circumstances. How many so-called tragic heroes really meet the bar?
Oedipus the King
Part of the play’s backstory is that Laius, Oedipus’s father, has been cursed by the gods for moral transgressions he perpetrated as a younger man. When Oedipus was born, it was prophesied that he would kill his father and marry his mother, Jocasta, the king and queen of Thebes, respectively. To avoid such horror, Laius ordered that his son be killed. But Jocasta could not murder her baby. Oedipus was abandoned to die of exposure but was rescued by a shepherd who raised him before turning him over to Polybus and Merope, childless rulers of Corinth.
As a teenager, Oedipus is informed by an oracle of his cruel destiny, and believing Polybus and Merope to be his parents, he flees Corinth to avoid killing one and marrying the other. At an intersection of three roads, he meets a stranger who he believes is a commoner. They dispute who has the right-of-way. The stranger either runs his chariot over Oedipus’s foot or whips him (this is part of the backstory and is not made clear); either way, this initiates a brawl in which Oedipus kills the stranger and some of his attendants in self-defense.
Further along, Oedipus confronts a monster, the Sphinx, which has been terrorizing Thebes. It has been demanding an answer to a riddle—and killing those who fail to provide it. Many innocents have been slaughtered. Oedipus, however, answers the riddle, precipitating the monster’s death and thereby liberating Thebans from its clutches.
Oedipus enters Thebes as a hero. King Laius recently has been killed under mysterious circumstances; Oedipus marries the older but still lovely Jocasta and thereby takes the throne. For years, Oedipus and Jocasta govern wisely, they have four children, and Oedipus is respected by his subjects as both a good king and a good man.
But blight and plague strike the city. The elders appeal to Oedipus to save Thebes once again. The king sends his brother-in-law Creon to the Oracle at Delphi. Creon returns and shares the Oracle’s message: Thebes will be afflicted until the murderer of Laius is identified and punished.
Oedipus curses the murderer and vows to find and punish him. He calls for the “seer,” the blind prophet Tiresias, who knows the truth but will not speak. He urges Oedipus to give up the search. Enraged, the hotheaded Oedipus accuses the prophet of complicity in the murder. Tiresias then speaks the truth—that Oedipus is the murderer, a claim Oedipus dismisses as nonsense.
Jocasta attempts to soothe Oedipus: She says that prophets are unreliable—that her son was fated to kill his father, a prophecy proven false by the fact that Laius was killed by bandits at a country crossroads. The mention of a crossroads disturbs Oedipus, and he wonders if he did kill Laius after all.
A messenger arrives from Corinth with news that Polybus has died, which relieves Oedipus because now he cannot kill the man he believes to be his father. The messenger is the very shepherd who rescued the infant Oedipus and delivered him to Corinth. He tells Oedipus that Merope is not his biological mother. Jocasta, starting to realize the horrific truth, begs Oedipus to stop investigating. But Oedipus, determined to find the truth, threatens the reluctant shepherd, once his guardian, with torture until the full truth is revealed: It was the son of King Laius that Jocasta had delivered into his hands to be left to die of exposure; and it was King Laius—his biological father—whom he killed in the traffic dispute years ago. The shepherd was the sole survivor of Laius’s party that had assaulted Oedipus.
Now, the full truth is known. Jocasta commits suicide. Oedipus gouges out his eyes. He begs Creon to assume the throne, to banish him from the kingdom, and to look after his children. The final line of the chorus is: “we must call no one happy who is of mortal race, until he has crossed life’s border, free from pain.”3
The characters we discuss here are generally referred to as “tragic heroes.” Tragic, no doubt; but how many of these figures actually as heroes?
Oedipus is heroic. He killed the Sphinx and ruled Thebes justly for years. Most important, to save his city from affliction, he pursues truth dauntlessly, rejecting all warnings to relent, including from people he trusts. When the horrific truth is discovered, he shoulders responsibility courageously and accepts his painful punishment. Oedipus did not cause the horrors he suffers; the gods did. Indeed, he does everything he can think of to avert atrocity—but the curse on the house of Laius brings him to ruin.
Oedipus’s flaws are that he is arrogant and hotheaded: He berates Tiresias for withholding the horrendous truth, he unjustly accuses both Tiresias and Creon of plotting against him, and, instead of yielding right-of-way, he brawls with Laius over a traffic dispute and kills him in self-defense. But heroes sometimes are flawed, including morally. We must also remember that he lives in an aristocratic society and a warrior culture. Aristocrats were generally arrogant toward commoners, and warriors were too proud to yield to those of lesser rank. Often they fought to the death over what we would consider trivialities, the stronger prevailed, and nobody questioned it. Granting Oedipus his context, his deeds might have been unworthy of a great champion, but they neither negated his achievements nor fomented his demise.
Sophocles’s philosophy is what undermines Oedipus. He brilliantly dramatizes a fatalistic theme that no man can escape his destiny. The more an individual strives against the web of fate, the deeper he enmeshes himself in it. Shakespeare, in his brutally dark masterpiece King Lear, provides the poetry that perfectly expresses Sophocles’s theme: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.”4
Oedipus generally battles powerfully for the good against forces that cause most others to cower—monsters, men, and fearsome truth. But in Sophocles’s view, no man can overcome having the gods arrayed against him. Oedipus is doomed from the start; his very strength of character and body, and the titanic struggle these enable him to wage, only plunge him deeper into the coils of his ghastly destiny. As such, he is indisputably a tragic hero, powerfully good but crushed by forces no man can master: gods dead set on wrecking his life.
Sophocles here raises profound moral questions regarding his (and any) religion. If the gods perpetrate such evil, are they worthy to be worshipped? Feared, yes; worshipped, no.
Because supernaturalism is fantasy, the story itself provides no didactic takeaways. What would the lesson be? Men should not fight gods? There are no gods. Men should not search for the truth? Oedipus’s determination to find the truth is the greatest of his heroic traits—and not searching for it means destruction for his city. In general, not searching for truth leaves us in ignorance.
But if we zoom out and consider the ultimate cause of Oedipus’s downfall—Sophocles’s philosophy—we can draw a valuable lesson. Accepting fantasies can lead one to the false conclusion that men—even heroic ones—are the helpless playthings of the gods, which can cause one to give in to fatalism and suffer the consequences. If Sophocles chose to name this play in accordance with its theme, its title might be The Snares of Destiny.
Othello
Othello is a Moor—a dark-skinned North African. He is an accomplished general in service to the Venetian Christians fighting against the Turkish Muslims, and he’s an outsider in Venice.
Othello has secretly married Desdemona, daughter of a Venetian senator. Othello has promoted Cassio, an inexperienced officer, over Iago, a combat veteran. Roderigo, a wealthy man in love with Desdemona, has paid Iago to help him woo her. Now Roderigo discovers that she married Othello.
Iago tells Roderigo that he hates Othello for promoting Cassio over him (and adds later that Othello is rumored to have slept with Iago’s wife, Emilia). They holler under the senator’s window that his daughter has married Othello, and he discovers that his daughter is indeed missing. The Duke of Venice sends Othello to Cyprus to ward off a Turkish assault; Desdemona insists that she be allowed to accompany her husband and is granted permission.
The Turkish fleet is destroyed in a storm, and Othello announces a party that night to celebrate Cyprus’s safety. Iago duplicitously convinces Roderigo that Cassio is his main rival for Desdemona, who Iago asserts will soon tire of Othello. Iago says that Roderigo should disgrace Cassio by initiating a brawl with him at the party. Iago gets Cassio drunk, Roderigo initiates a fracas, and Iago goes for help to end the brawl. When Othello demands to know who initiated it, Iago pretends not to know, and his apparent nonpartisanship garners Othello’s respect. Othello strips Cassio of his rank. Cassio tells his supposed friend Iago that his reputation is ruined, and Iago recommends that he beseech the general’s wife for help. Cassio meets with Desdemona, who is sympathetic to his request, but when Othello returns, Cassio departs surreptitiously.
Iago induces Othello’s jealousy by asking why Cassio would sneak off guiltily at his approach, suggesting that Cassio and Desdemona are having an affair. Desdemona implores her husband on behalf of Cassio, which inflames the general’s suspicions. Desdemona’s handkerchief, a love token from Othello, flutters unnoticed to the floor; and Iago’s wife, Emilia, retrieves it, giving it to her husband, who plants it in Cassio’s room. He then tells Othello that Cassio has it. Othello demands the handkerchief from Desdemona, but she cannot produce it. Iago arranges a meeting with Cassio that Othello can overhear; Iago pumps Cassio for information about his relationship with Bianca, a prostitute to whom he has given the handkerchief—but he guides the dialogue, making it sound as if Cassio speaks of Desdemona. Bianca enters with the handkerchief, chiding Cassio for giving her a token from another woman. Othello is enraged. Iago promises Othello that he will bring justice by killing Cassio.
Iago tells the lovelorn Roderigo that he must kill Cassio to have a clear chance with Desdemona. Roderigo attempts to kill Cassio but fails; Iago wounds him and kills Roderigo, thereby removing a witness to his crimes.
Othello smothers Desdemona and tells Emilia he has killed her for infidelity. But Emilia knows that Desdemona is innocent and tells him so. Othello cites the evidence of the handkerchief, about which Emilia tells him the truth. Othello tries to kill Iago but is disarmed. Iago kills Emilia; he flees but is apprehended. Othello commits suicide. The authorities, hearing the full truth, order Iago’s execution.
By contrast with Sophocles, when we enter Shakespeare’s universe, we occupy a world where mystical entities exist—ghosts and witches—but they lack the encompassing power of supernatural beings that Sophocles depicted. Men, not gods, wreak their own destruction in Shakespeare’s world.
Othello dramatizes the destructiveness of the iniquitous, the credulity of the powerful, and the fecklessness of the good. Othello is not its prime character. Iago devises the nefarious schemes that drive the main action; he dominates the story. Othello is a hero only in the play’s backstory. He bravely defended Venice. He wooed Desdemona and won her heart. Early in the real-time action, he gives a somewhat commanding speech. Other than that, he is a pathetic dupe that Iago manipulates based on flimsy evidence. Othello is weak-minded, readily led and destroyed by his perfidious underling. He is not a hero, tragic or otherwise. He is a 20th-century-style antihero, exhibiting a diminished moral stature more akin to Willy Loman of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman than to Oedipus.5
The actions Othello should take are clear. An honest man knows that the accused always deserves a fair hearing. If Othello had properly investigated the situation—if he had sought truth with even a degree of the resolution that Oedipus showed—the case against Desdemona would have unraveled, and Iago would stand convicted of dastardly malice. This was in the general’s power to do.
Further, murder for infidelity is a punishment grossly incommensurate with the transgression. Othello compounded monumental credulity with unthinking rage-driven murder. To be uncritically deceived by Iago’s threadbare dupery was the vice of an antihero, but to murder an innocent woman was the act of a villain.
Unlike in Sophocles’s play, there are didactic lessons to be learned here. First, we must demand conclusive evidence before we convict someone of serious moral transgressions. Second, the accused must always get a fair hearing and the opportunity to speak on his or her behalf. Third, the punishment must fit the crime. Divorce or permanent separation—not death—is appropriate for marital infidelity.
The play is also a powerful portrayal of nihilism: destruction for its own sake. Here is a real-life example: In 1945, as Germany’s enemies closed in on the Nazi hierarchy, they desperately needed trains to move men and supplies to both the Western and Eastern fronts. Instead, they diverted some of those trains to ship thousands of Jews to the death camps, willing to hasten their own demise as long as they could murder more innocent human beings.
The parable of the scorpion and the frog captures nihilism’s essence. A scorpion wants a frog to carry him across a river; the frog demurs because the scorpion will sting and kill him; the scorpion responds that if I kill you, then I, too, will die. The frog is convinced and sets out across the river with his passenger. Midway, the scorpion stings him. As the frog dies, he gasps, “Why did you do that? Now you, too, will die.” The scorpion responds, “It’s what I am.” The frog was convinced on grounds of the scorpion’s rational self-interest. But the scorpion, like the Nazis, did not act in its rational self-interest. It acted in undiluted destructiveness.
As Leonard Peikoff observed, Iago
works to destroy his heroic commander, knowing that he himself will gain nothing thereby; he is affronted by the great man because he is great, and seeks revenge against heroism because it is heroism. . . . Iago smashes what he cannot help but admire, and does so for its own sake, expecting no reward.6
Peikoff is correct: It is Othello, hero of the backstory, whom Iago loathes. Othello is a chilling case study of nihilism in action, and it provides an urgent warning: Our well-being, indeed our very survival, rests on a capacity to judge moral character accurately. Othello displays execrable judgment of character: He trusts the untrustworthy and does not trust the trustworthy. This leads to his downfall and that of his innocent wife.
Shakespeare titled many tragedies after major characters. But we can speculate what the titles might be if named for the themes. Shakespeare and his audience knew Biblical stories, including that Cain murdered Abel from sheer hatred after God preferred Abel’s offering. An appropriate thematic title for this play is The Vengeance of Cain.
Macbeth
Macbeth and Banquo, two generals, have defended Scotland effectively against invading armies. Both are loyal to King Duncan and are military heroes.
Crossing a desolate moor, they encounter a trio of witches who prophesy that Macbeth will be thane (feudal lord) of Cawdor and eventually king of Scotland. The witches add that Banquo will found a line of kings.
Some of King Duncan’s men tell Macbeth that the king has appointed him thane of Cawdor; Macbeth wonders whether the witches’ claims are indeed true. He and Duncan plan to dine at Macbeth’s castle that night. Macbeth writes to his wife to let her know of both the prophecy and the dinner engagement.
Lady Macbeth wants the throne and overrides her husband’s initial reluctance to murder the king. She gets the king’s servants drunk; Macbeth stabs Duncan while he sleeps and murders the servants, whom he blames for the assassination. Duncan’s sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, flee Scotland, and Macbeth becomes king.
Macbeth now regards what the witches said about Banquo founding a line of kings as a threat to his own power and hires murderers to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. They murder Banquo, but Fleance escapes. At a feast celebrating Macbeth’s kingship, Banquo’s ghost appears to Macbeth, and Macbeth raves fearfully. The Scottish nobles grow suspicious.
Macbeth visits the witches, who tell him to beware of the nobleman Macduff, that no man born of woman can harm Macbeth and that he need fear nothing until the forest called Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Macduff flees to England. Macbeth seizes his castle and murders his family.
Prince Malcolm raises an army; Macduff joins them. The Scottish nobles support the invaders. Lady Macbeth, tormented by guilt, goes mad and commits suicide. Macbeth fortifies his stronghold at Dunsinane. But he learns that the English soldiers attack under camouflage of branches from Birnam Wood—and he realizes that the witches tricked him into believing that he was invulnerable. He fights to the end and confronts Macduff, who tells him that he was “not of woman born” but was “untimely ripped from his mother’s womb” (brought into the world by cesarean section). Macduff slays and beheads Macbeth. Malcolm, crowned king of Scotland, declares his intention to rule justly.
Macbeth bears superficial similarities to Othello. Both are military commanders who have effectively defended their nations. As with Othello, Macbeth’s backstory is heroic; and, as with Othello, only his backstory is heroic. Macbeth descends so quickly into power-lusting violence that for most of the story he is not a tragic hero but a bloody-handed villain.
The play’s most important aspect is the contrasting ways that Macbeth and his wife respond to their crimes. Lady Macbeth wants the throne for her husband and urges him to assassinate Duncan. She does not herself wield the dagger but instigates Macbeth to do so. There would be no regicide if not for her ceaseless agitation. But once Macbeth stains his hands with blood, he devolves fully into a bloodthirsty tyrant. His wife, by contrast, is so tormented by guilt that she sinks into madness and suicide.
Based on the macho code that dominates Macbeth’s world (and some cultures to this day), it will be argued that he has the inner strength to accept his crimes and keep fighting whereas Lady Macbeth lacks the courage of her own power lust. But this view is mistaken. The truth is that Lady Macbeth, despite accusing her husband of being “too full o’ the milk of human kindness,” herself retains more humanity than he does—enough, at least, to experience genuine remorse.7 She has a conscience, albeit a feeble one. Right and wrong matter to her, however belatedly. This is a shred of moral strength. But Macbeth, instead of recognizing his own villainy and either committing suicide or surrendering and accepting the execution he deserves, battles to the bitter end, thereby causing more innocent deaths, including of his own men. Macbeth is militarily strong, but he battles on from a desperate, obdurately irrational commitment to criminal ends. He does not fight from upright dedication to a noble ideal, as do Malcolm and Macduff, seeking to restore justice to Scottish rule. In terms of moral strength, therefore, Macbeth devolves into the weakest character in the story’s universe.
The play thereby studies the consequences of power lust for the power lusters, particularly the corrosive effects of evil on its perpetrators. Shakespeare shows two ways that a person can react to having committed evil: He can recognize the full horror of his crime(s) and go mad; or he can reject morality, descend into desensitized brutality, and exit the realm of humanity into a hellish netherworld where all crimes, regardless how wantonly gratuitous, are permissible. The Bard showed us that the wages of murderous power lust are self-inflicted misery. Given this truth, an appropriate theme-driven title is The Fatal Allure. At this point, a cautionary principle that discerning viewers might extrapolate from the bloody experience is: Pursue lethal power over others at your own peril.
Hamlet
Prince Hamlet knows that his father, King Hamlet of Denmark, died; that his father’s brother, Claudius, ascended to the throne instead of himself, the rightful heir; that King Hamlet was a man of moral rectitude whereas Claudius is an unprincipled reprobate; and that the artful Claudius seduced Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude, and married her. At the start of the play, the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears to him and tells him that Claudius murdered him and thereby usurped the throne.
King Hamlet’s ghost exhorts the prince to kill Claudius, to not harm his mother, and to assume his rightful place on the throne. Hamlet vows that he will. But he vacillates. He claims that he needs more evidence. He feigns madness, enabling him to plot against the king under the guise of a harmless crank. Claudius enlists Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two classmates of Hamlet, to spy on the prince. Polonius, the king’s adviser, tells Claudius that the prince is mad because of lovelorn feelings for Polonius’s daughter, Ophelia. The two spy on Hamlet and Ophelia; although Hamlet seems crazy, he shows no love for Ophelia.
Hamlet hires a group of actors to present a play. He instructs them to create a scene that, unbeknownst to them, exactly parallels the ghost’s description of King Hamlet’s murder. Claudius reacts so guiltily to the scene that Hamlet has no further doubts. He would slay the usurper at once but finds him kneeling in prayer and refrains because death at such a moment would send Claudius’s soul undeservedly to heaven. Claudius, recognizing that the prince is a grave threat, plans to banish Hamlet to England. The prince confronts his mother regarding her blameworthy acquiescence to the usurper’s oily charm. How, he asks, when you were married for years to my father—a moral paragon—can you slip into bed, and quickly, with an odious satyr like Claudius? “Frailty, thy name is woman!” he exclaims earlier in the play about her “most wicked speed to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets.”8 He hears movement behind the curtain in her room; thinking it’s Claudius, he stabs, mortally wounding Polonius. Claudius dispatches Hamlet to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with orders to the English king to execute Hamlet.
Ophelia goes mad and drowns. Her brother, Laertes, blames Hamlet for the death of his father and sister; he returns from France seeking vengeance. Hamlet’s ship is seized by pirates. He convinces the pirates to demand a ransom for him from Claudius. He also writes a letter demanding the execution of his escorts, seals it with his father’s signet ring, and switches it with the letter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern intend to present to the king of England. Freed under ransom, he returns to Denmark; Claudius arranges a “sporting” fencing match between Laertes and Hamlet; but the king and Polonius’s son covertly poison the tip of Laertes’s blade. Claudius also sets out a poisoned cup of wine to be available for Hamlet to drink. In the match, Hamlet scores several hits; eventually Laertes scores a hit, dooming Hamlet. The duelists scuffle, their swords are accidentally switched, and Hamlet scores another hit, thereby dooming Laertes. Gertrude accidentally drinks the poisoned wine and dies. Laertes confesses, telling Hamlet the full truth. Finally, Hamlet kills Claudius. Before dying, Hamlet instructs his friend Horatio to tell the full truth of his story. Prince Fortinbras of Norway, a visitor to the Danish court, arranges a hero’s funeral for Prince Hamlet.
So far, we’ve seen that Oedipus was a tragic hero, Othello an antihero, and Macbeth a villain. When we come to Hamlet, we have one of the most complex lead characters in all literature. That Prince Hamlet is a dithering temporizer is clear. But if vacillation were all there was to the prince, this play would not have the enduring appeal it has had.
Hamlet is a brilliant student at the University of Wittenberg. He is an ivory-tower intellectual, more comfortable in the world of ideas than in the realm of action. Shakespeare here dramatized a semi-Platonic theory. Plato hypothesized a transcendent world of ideas in which philosophers find truth. Part of Plato’s legacy is a theory/practice divide wherein an idea might be true in theory but unworkable in practice. We see a version of this in Hamlet as the prince has several bright ideas—feigning madness, putting on a play—that still do not enable him, in practice, to both deliver justice to Claudius and survive the struggle. Although a shrewd planner, the prince has difficulty implementing his ideas in decisive action. He springs effectively into action either on impulse or when circumstances present death as an imminent alternative. (His killing of Polonius, whom he mistakes for Claudius, exemplifies the former; his brilliant turning of the tables on Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern is an instance of the latter.)
Hamlet is a morally principled man called upon to bring justice in the form of bloody murder. When given time to think, his conscience militates against the horror of the deed. To the prince’s credit, he is moral light years ahead of Macbeth. Here is a superb irony in these two plays: Macbeth has no legitimate claim on the Scottish throne but murders to gain it. Hamlet has the strongest legitimate claim on the Danish throne but balks at justifiably killing the usurper. Every fiber of this “sweet prince” rebels against the deed. He mournfully declaims, “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!”9
Hamlet faces a worse predicament than does Othello, who is the ruling power on Cyprus and has sufficient power to investigate and command all parties to swear on the Bible. Nor does Othello face anyone who threatens his life if, a la Oedipus, he conducts a rigorous pursuit of truth. But in Hamlet, the ruling power is Claudius. If Hamlet plots to overthrow the king, Claudius will declare him a traitor and have him killed. Hamlet faces dangers that Othello does not. His path to victory is narrower and fraught with graver threat. Nevertheless, he is correctly convinced that the usurper is a bloody regicide, who must be overthrown. Hamlet also knows that he is more than the rightful king—he, like his father, would govern Denmark more wisely than does the usurper. For several reasons, he must take remedial actions. What can he do to kill the usurper, survive the conflict, and assume the throne?
The answer lies in Hamlet’s refusal to slay Claudius while the regicide kneels in prayer. Hamlet believes that Claudius’s death at such a moment would result in the salvation of the regicide’s soul. The key players in this drama hold Catholic beliefs. One is that Claudius’s soul, upon his death, will go to Hell where it will writhe for eternity. Given the Christian premises that all of the characters held, what heroic act could Hamlet perform to bring justice?
What Hamlet should do—his best chance for full triumph—is to appear in court with Horatio and his other supporters: He must approach the throne. He, an accomplished fencer, must draw his sword, press it to the king’s heart, and force the usurper to his knees. While Horatio, his men, and their swords form a ring of protective steel that temporarily holds back the king’s guards, Hamlet must compel Claudius to confess. “You are about to die,” Hamlet should state. “Nothing can save you. Your only chance at salvation lies in confessing and repenting your sins. Otherwise, you will burn forever. Before God, now state and repent your crimes.” Claudius, a blustering bully, knowing that death is upon him and terrified for his soul, would confess in the hearing of witnesses. Hamlet should give him a chance to repent and pray, and then plunge his sword into the usurper’s heart, killing him instantly. He can say to Claudius’s corpse, “You have been punished for your crimes. May God have mercy on your soul.” He can turn to the courtiers and soldiers, and say, “You have heard the king’s confession. Who is your rightful king?” “Prince Hamlet is the rightful king,” they would accurately reply. The prince could then make preparations for his coronation.
This is what the prince should have done. But Hamlet, a dilatory vacillator, does not do it. He relentlessly temporizes. He finally takes decisive action only when his own demise is imminent. Alas, the upright Hamlet rids Denmark of the regicide but fails to provide it with the king it deserves. Given Hamlet’s paralysis by analysis, a fitting title for this drama is The Fraught Delay or The Fateful Delay. The tragedy-averting takeaway can be gleaned in a line from Macbeth: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.”10 The application here (although not Macbeth’s meaning) is that if something must be done, and especially if repugnant, it should be done immediately. Dilatory behavior transforms the odious but necessary task into one ever-more daunting.
Hamlet generally maintains a high-minded character, and he faces severe difficulties and dangers in his path. He also possesses prowess exceeding that of the average man, for he is a brilliant intellectual and an accomplished fencer. But alas, in large part because of a theory/practice division in his character, he fails to triumph. In the decisive moments, when full victory is possible, he does not act heroically. He is a perfect example of a mixed case: He rids Denmark of the usurping regicide, but his pronounced vacillation wreaks his own demise and marks him predominantly as an antihero. The most tragic element of the prince’s story regards the downfall of the man he could have been rather than of the man he was.
The Fountainhead
This is the story of Howard Roark, a revolutionary American architect. He is an independent thinker whose innovative designs generally are rejected by a society in which most people do not think for themselves. Roark refuses to compromise his artistic integrity, and he struggles to gain commercial success on his own terms.
Gail Wynand is an important secondary character. He was a gang leader in the harsh slums of Hell’s Kitchen—but he recognized the importance of education and became a determined autodidact. He worked multiple jobs when young; he had innovative ideas but was invariably told, “Shut up, kid; you don’t run things around here.” He concluded that the only way he could succeed in life was to gain power over the bovine dolts who compose the bulk of humanity. He founds the New York Banner, a scandal sheet pandering to the vulgar tastes of the unlettered masses, and nurtures it to great success. But his own values are consummate. He loves only three things: (1) the most exalted artworks, which he purchases for his private gallery; (2) Dominique Francon, a woman whose beauty is matched only by her idealism; and (3) Howard Roark’s magnificent designs—and Roark himself, his matchless strength of character. Wynand gains wealth and influence. For most of the story, he believes that now “he does run things around here.” But he excludes his own personal life and values from the Banner; it belongs not to him but to the masses.
Wynand’s inner conflict explodes when Roark dynamites a government housing project he designed but that was ineptly altered without his permission and in violation of an agreement. Most of society assails Roark. Wynand resists the majority, defending Roark. The masses unleash their outrage against Wynand. He is denounced, and his workers go on strike. He, Dominique, and several others labor to produce the Banner, the pages of which are now filled with Wynand’s own values. He upholds noble ideals—the right of a creator to his own intellectual property and the revolutionary brilliance of Howard Roark’s designs. But Wynand’s public is uninterested in noble ideals, and those who support such ideals don’t read the Banner. He loses money.
Wynand asks Roark if he wants him to give in, and Roark tells him to hold on if it costs him every penny he owns. Roark understands that Wynand sold his soul for his corrupt journalistic empire, so the cost of reclaiming it is equal to the full payment he received. “Don’t give in,” Roark says. But Wynand does give in. To save his newspaper, he surrenders to the strikers and denounces Roark in the Banner.
He realizes that he does not “run things around here.” He did not control the people to whom he pandered; they controlled him. In seeking power, he sold himself to the crowd. Wynand shuts down the paper rather than have it controlled by the strikers to whom he capitulated. But his soul is shattered by the realization that his career was based on a lie. When Roark rises for the verdict in his dynamiting case, Wynand also rises. Roark is acquitted, demonstrating to Wynand that practical success does not require selling one’s soul. Wynand is therefore convicted not only of selling his soul but of doing so for nothing. He realizes that he wrought his own inner destruction. He hires Roark to build the Wynand Building, the tallest structure in New York City, telling him to build it as a “monument to that spirit which is yours . . . and could have been mine.”11
We have seen that Macbeth was a power luster. So, in a different form, was Gail Wynand. Wynand sought not to physically dominate others but, rather, to control their thinking. His tragic error was to accept in his youth that success requires pandering to unthinking customers. He is true to his own values in his private life. But when it comes to the Banner, he follows his own judgment only in regard to the how, not the what, to the method by which he builds its wide circulation, not its content. This policy explodes in Wynand’s face when he attempts to defend Roark in the Banner.
Gail Wynand could have been in journalism what Howard Roark was in architecture. He was brilliant, creative, and ferociously hardworking. He was an intellectual, as well as an entrepreneur, and a gifted writer. By dint of heroic efforts, he rose from the slums and created an empire.
If Wynand had established a newspaper featuring his values instead of mindlessly vulgar ones, what would it look like? A clue comes from Dominique. The paper published brilliant editorials celebrating Roark’s masterpieces. Dominique asks Wynand if he wrote them, he affirms it, and she responds: “Gail, what a great journalist you could have been.”12 And should have been. A soul such as Wynand’s, shining with veneration of human achievement, should not be for sale. What type of newspaper would Wynand create if it emanated from his soul? It would feature hard news, not slanted in any ideological direction, written by the most insightful reporters. Its editorial pages would uphold genius, creativity, life-affirming accomplishments in the arts, education, business, science, and every field of productive endeavor. Politically, its editorials would support individual rights against every form of statism. For society rumors, Broadway gossip, and the like, readers would have to go elsewhere.
Wynand was capable of building a newspaper with a bold voice supporting individual rights and creative achievement. There were no gods to crush him, no witches or ghosts to bedevil him, and no usurping tyrant to threaten his life. He lived in turn-of-the-20th-century America, a period of political/economic freedom where few if any government restrictions stood as roadblocks in his path. Full victory was within his reach. Shelley wrote famously, “Poets [and writers more broadly] are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Wynand could and should have been an immensely positive legislator of the world.
For him, more than the other figures discussed, the potential of life-giving accomplishment was astronomically high.
Of all the tragic figures, his immense creativity positioned him to be the most heroic and provided him the greatest life-enhancing potential. He, with the clearest path to victory, wrought his own destruction by means of avoidable error. His story is the bitterest pill to swallow; his demise the most egregious loss, and the most heartbreaking.
He was a self-destroyed potentially great man, and realizing the enormous waste of his life crushed his spirit. Wynand belatedly discovered the agonizing truth that if you sell your soul, you receive no price worthy of it in return. If Ayn Rand had written a story depicting Wynand’s demise as its central focus, an appropriate title would be Harvest of Betrayal. The takeaway is clear: When a man sows treason to the self, he reaps a bitter yield.
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From these observations, we can draw several important takeaways: (1) If we accept religious fantasies, we are prone to believe fatalistic notions of human fecklessness in the grip of divine power and act accordingly (Oedipus). (2) Developing a discerning moral judgment is vital to one’s well-being (Othello). We must judge people’s character, and we must do it continuously, conscientiously, and wisely; our lives depend on it. (3) Power-lusting behavior is as pernicious to the power luster as it is to his victims (Macbeth). (4) Vacillation in the face of an odious but necessary task inflicts harm on oneself (Hamlet). (5) Self-betrayal is self-destruction (The Fountainhead).
As art, superb literary tragedy induces in us unforgettable intellectual-emotional experiences of human error leading to the agonizing downfalls of even great (or formerly great) men. As philosophy, it does not tell but shows us in searing action many major errors to avoid if a flourishing life is our goal. Because of these values, literary tragedy has illuminated human life for thousands of years. Partake of this literary genius—and be illuminated.