Western Civilization I / Unit 4 WC1 0322 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading a Greek Tragedy's Structure: Flaw, Hubris, Fate
The idea
The exam may hand you a plot summary and ask what makes it a tragedy, or which element a passage shows. The method is four questions: who is the powerful figure, what is the flaw, is the fall from the flaw or from fate, and where does the chorus stand. Hubris, overreaching pride, is the usual flaw; pathos is the effect sought.
In practice
Take a course-invented plot. A king who has saved his city is told a plague will lift when a killer is found; he swears to find the man at any cost; the search reveals the killer is himself. Powerful figure: the king. Flaw: certainty of his own righteousness, a form of hubris. Fall: from the flaw and from fate together, since the crime was foretold and the oath was chosen. Chorus: the citizens, narrating and pleading. Now a second plot. A general returns victorious and is murdered by his wife for sacrificing their daughter. Powerful figure: the general. Flaw: the sacrifice, ambition over family. Fall: from the flaw. The chorus watches and warns. Both end unhappily, as the anchor says most do.
Where people slip
Comedy uses the same chorus and festival setting but seeks mockery, not pity. If the passage invites you to laugh at the powerful, it is Aristophanes' form, not the tragedians'. And the names the exam expects, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, come from the witnesses, not the anchor.
Your place on the trail
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