SOURCE: "Tragedy without Character: Poetics VI.1450^a 24," in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. XXVIII, No. 1, Fall, 1969, pp. 55-62.

[In the following essay, Lord examines Aristotle's elevation of plot above all other elements of tragedy and argues that he does indeed assert that all aspects of character, including the concept of "hamartia," are a function of plot.]

I

It is commonly believed that there are two kinds of readers or spectators. There are those who read primarily for plot, story, action, narrative, and who especially enjoy spectacle—the vulgar. Then there are those, the connoisseurs of letters, the cognoscenti—ourselves—who place a greater premium on character, thought, and diction. When we find Aristotle expressly giving the pride of place to plot among the six parts of Tragedy—Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Spectacle, and Music—we are instantly perplexed, if not outraged. Even those of us who may be sympathetic to Aristotle on some fairly general ground are strongly tempted to suppose that what Aristotle means by plot, mythos in some places, logos in others, cannot possibly be that crude thing, namely, story and action. He must mean something more subtle than that. Those of us who are not prepared to give Aristotle the benefit of the doubt will insist that he does, indeed, mean the crude thing and that he is insensitive to the finer features of the literary art.

In this essay I shall assume that Aristotle does mean that plot, story, action, the crude thing, is primary and I shall undertake to defend his thesis in regard to one point. This point has been felt to be the most vulnerable of all his assertions of the primacy of plot. Aristotle is not content to say merely that plot is the primary part of tragedy. He goes further. He says, "Without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character" (1450^a 24).¹ I shall understand this statement in its most uncompromising form; by taking it quite literally I hope to show what tragedy without character entails.

More important still, there is a general principle at work here which lies at the foundation of aesthetic inquiry. I have argued that to understand a work of art is to understand the kind of unity it possesses.² Here, then, is a program that requires us to show in detail how the parts of a certain type of work, in the present case a tragedy, function together to produce a unity. To discover what kind of unity a tragedy possesses one must try to separate in thought what may or may not be separable in reality in an effort to determine whether or not it is indeed actually separable in reality. If the theory of organic unity is correct, it may be supposed that such an effort at separation will prove a failure. But having questioned the doctrine of organic unity, we are prepared to accept in certain cases quite a different verdict. It is surprising that the philosopher who is especially associated with the theory of organic unity should be willing to allow for a tragedy without character. Presumably, then, Aristotle does not regard character as being, in the strict sense, organically entailed by tragedy, even though he assigns it a role second only to plot.

If we look at what Aristotle actually does in the Poetics, we find that his remark in VI, 1450^a 24 is by no means an isolated apercu. He is engaged in the ambitious enterprise of understanding tragedy through what can only be called a total dismantling or disassembling of tragedy into its component parts. What is being dismantled is a system (not an organism) which, in the process of being reassembled, is seen to exhibit a fairly complex kind of unity. The present essay is designed as a specific application of a more general method of aesthetic inquiry (call it systems-analysis, if you will) which can be employed in the examination of any work of art.

My discussion remains entirely within the Aristotelian framework; it does not depend on a redefinition of Tragedy, "an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude: in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; …"³ on a redefinition of Character, "that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to agents⁴ … that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids,"⁵ nor on a redefinition of Plot, "the arrangement" or "combination of the incidents" (Aristotle uses the word synthesis).⁶

Those commentators who seem to respect Aristotle's emphasis on the primacy of plot usually undermine this emphasis by their modifications of it. Drawing upon Aristotle's work in ethics, they argue that since character is formed by action, tragedy is to be viewed as character-in-action. This is essentially the position of S. H. Butcher and Humphry House. House goes even further to insist that Aristotle's emphasis on the primacy of plot "is best understood as an attempt to guarantee the individuality of character."⁷ Such modifications of Aristotle's thesis tend to make plot and character correlative. The fact of the matter is that Aristotle explicitly states: "… Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action.… "⁸ More fully,

Dramatic action … is not with a view to the representation of character; character comes in as subsidiary to actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all.⁹

For House, plot becomes subservient to character because it supplies the material conditions which individuate character.¹⁰

To make plot and character correlative is to ignore the individual nature of these two parts of tragedy and to misconstrue their actual relationship to each other. There is no justification for the view that all six parts of a tragedy, taken together, should exhibit organic unity: Aristotle defines organic unity in specific connection with his discussion of plot. He tells us that the plot should exhibit a unity such that if any one of the parts of the plot is "displaced or removed the whole will be disjointed and disturbed."¹¹ We must not identify the parts of the plot with the six parts of tragedy: the plot is one of those six parts.

Three considerations argue for the independence and the separability of at least some of the parts of a tragedy. First, Aristotle grades them in importance. Character is given second place.¹² Spectacle is said to be least important because a work can achieve the proper effect just in the hearing.¹³ This means that the parts have "grades of relevance," as I have called it.¹⁴ In particular, then, there is at least one part, spectacle, which is both separable in thought and separable in reality.

The second consideration derives from the fact that most of the parts are said to possess each its own intrinsic power. Thought can arouse "pity, fear, anger and the like."¹⁵ Spectacle can also arouse pity and fear¹⁶ and it has an emotional attraction of its own.¹⁷ Music, though termed an embellishment,¹⁸ gives especially intense pleasure (as does spectacle) and we know from the Politics¹⁹ that music has the power to induce catharsis. Notice that we now have two parts, spectacle and music, which, even though they contribute to the tragic effect, cannot be taken as essential or indispensable.

Finally, Aristotle expressly maintains that there can be tragedy without character. No longer need we regard this statement as some oddity or stumbling block which must be excused in some way or dismissed as an extravagance. His statement is all of a piece with his general approach. Aristotle even entertains (for him) the more radical possibility of a plotless tragedy, or quasi-tragedy, when he says,

… if you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot.…²⁰

To sum up these results: we see that Aristotle, in his very investigation of tragedy, overhauls and dismantles it part by part. Accordingly, we find that we can have tragedy without spectacle. We can have tragedy without music. We can have tragedy without character. We may perhaps have tragedy without thought, for the incidents should speak for themselves.²¹ And we can even have tragedy without plot. Let us not, however, commit the fallacy of composition and conclude that we can have tragedy without all of these parts taken collectively!

Aristotle sees tragedy as a goal-directed system. The goal is catharsis. He disassembles tragedy in order to see how each part functions to promote that goal. Precisely because each part does individually contribute to the whole, no one part is absolutely necessary. The system is overdetermined and redundant. In this respect tragedy is indeed like a living organism. It is what W. R. Ashby calls ultrastable. Damage to a part of a living organism often receives compensation from another part. For instance, one part of the brain will take over for an injured part. Leonard Meyer has pointed out that this kind of analysis in particular brings to clear sight overdetermination and redundancy, features of a living organism. Furthermore, we can now see the advantages of the functional approach which an organic theory invites. I only inveigh against what might be termed the indispensability-interdependence view of organic unity.

II

Interestingly enough, it is Humphry House, with all his concern for the importance of character, who gives the key to tragedy without character. House maintains that the famous "flaw," the hamartia, has nothing to do with a moral state at all. He argues that the hamartia should not be viewed as a flaw or a moral frailty. Rather, it should be taken to mean a mistake due to ignorance of circumstance.²² Nearly all scholars now accept the interpretation of the hamartia as simple mistake. Gerald F. Else summarizes the scholarship and elaborates on the implications of this interpretation.²³ His conclusions (commended by Richmond Lattimore)²⁴ accord with House's thesis. Accordingly, I shall maintain without argument that hamartia means simple mistake. This mistake should not be construed as an error of judgment as Bywater does in his translation. An error of judgment implies a failure of practical wisdom and this, for Aristotle certainly, is a flaw in character. But anyone, anyone at all, can make a simple mistake. When Oedipus married locasta he made a mistake; there was no error in judgment. It may be difficult for us to accept the possibility that the tragic reversal can be brought about by an elementary error. Perhaps this is due to our traditional preoccupation with hubris as well as to a general fascination with flaws, preferably tragic, in ourselves and others.

Despite his interpretation of the hamartia as a simple mistake, House insists that Aristotle "assumes as a matter of course that the hamartia is accompanied by moral imperfections.… "²⁵ Does Aristotle make any such assumption? Here House is assuming, as a matter of course, the second part, Character, which seems likely to be flawed because the hero must not be "eminently" good. But to discover what tragedy without character is like we must respect Aristotle's dissociation of the hamartia from moral imperfection, be it vice, in the full-blown sense, or faulty judgment, a failure of practical wisdom.

Once we take the hamartia as a simple mistake without modification, explicit or implied, then we see that it is a function of the plot. House argues along these lines and Else urges further that the hamartia is complemented by the discovery.²⁶ The mistake is made in ignorance; the discovery involves the recognition of the mistake and is followed by or coincides with the reversal. When we see that the hamartia is a part of the plot together with the discovery and the reversal, then we realize that tragedy need not involve character at all.

Let us look at what Aristotle regards as the best kind of plot.

The last case is the best, as when in the Cresphontes Merope is about to slay her son, but, recognising who he is, spares his life. So in the Iphigenia, the sister recognises the brother just in time. Again in the Helle, the son recognises the mother when on the point of giving her up.²⁷

These plots turn on a simple mistake involving ignorance of identity. Of course the mistake is serious, but there is no vice, sin, moral frailty, or error of judgment in them. Again, as a function of the plot, the hamartia takes its place among those elements which Aristotle deems the most powerful in tragedy, the discovery and the reversal.²⁸ The hamartia, then, is the mistake which leads to the reversal. The discovery is the discovery of the mistake.

We are told that the best discovery involves persons closely related²⁹ and entails the shift from hate to love or love to hate.³⁰ Do these specifications of a good discovery introduce character, it could well be asked? To reply we must draw an important distinction. We must observe the difference between character and agent. Aristotle himself makes the distinction when he says,

Character in a play is that which reveals moral purpose of the agents, i.e. the sort of thing they seek or avoid, where that is not obvious.³¹

But surely the actions of the agents imply character? After all Aristotle tells us that

… the action involves agents, who must of necessity have distinctive qualities both of character and thought, since it is by these that we ascribe certain qualities to their actions …³²

All agents, in so far as they are capable of deliberation and choice, possess character, the disposition to choose or avoid certain things. However, an action need not reveal the character of the agent. We should note that Aristotle says, "character in a play … reveals moral purpose … where this is not obvious." All actions require agents, but an action need not reveal the char-require agents, but an action need not reveal the character of the agent, for instance, Oedipus's action in marrying locasta.

At this point protest may be raised that Aristotle is concerned with serious action and serious action is bound to reveal character. Here let me make another distinction, the distinction between the serious and the moral. The moral is not always introduced through deliberation and choice. A choice may bring about tragic consequences through a simple mistake. Then it is morally neutral. Furthermore, tragedies may evolve from sheer suffering; it is obvious that Aristotle's conception of an action includes suffering as well as doing. However, the action of most tragedies is a moral matter because it involves killing, incest, adultery, as well as conflicts within and between the domestic, religious, and political domains. And, Aristotle is in fact primarily concerned with moral action. Must not moral action surely reveal character? In Oedipus the action is such that one might say, "If I had known so and so (of which I was ignorant at the time) I would have acted differently." Had Oedipus known that he was marrying his mother he would have acted differently. The remorse, which coincides with his discovery of the identity of locasta, testifies to this. Is not Oedipus's character thereby defined? No. I think we can say without any hesitation that if Al Capone were to discover that he had married his mother, he would be in a state of the greatest remorse, if remorse is not too weak a word. But knowing this about him is to know nothing. We have reached such a fundamental level that we can take certain responses for granted. This is also true of the shift from hate to love or love to hate which attends discovery, as when Merope recognizes her son, Iphigenia her brother, and the son in Helle recognizes his mother. I am not suggesting that Oedipus Rex is a play without character; I am exploring what tragedy without character is like and what it means to say that plot is primary.

It must be stressed that tragic actions involving members of the same family are so serious in themselves that they do not call for considerations of character. The fact of being an agent in a given relationship does not, in itself, reveal character. To be a mother, son, brother, or a sister does not commit the agent to a definite character. Nor does the discovery of the identity of the agent, in itself, entail character. When the discovery involves members of the same family it is sure to give rise to extreme emotions and these do not in themselves reveal character. We expect certain emotions to be aroused in members of the same family in certain situations. We have a minimal expectation, that, as a matter of course, a son will not be pleased to discover that he has married his mother. We assume Oedipus's remorse. Finally, the events are so terrible and the suffering so great in tragedy that it is meaningless to ask what the agents involved are like.

Both in literature and in life tragedy is a great leveler of character. When we hear of a widow who has lost her only two sons in a war, we do not ask (outside the seminar room, that is) whether she is a good woman or what her sons were like. Thus since tragedy, by its very nature, does not call for considerations of character, we can readily understand why, on simply hearing the plot, we "thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place."³³

In the foregoing, I have tried to show how the hamartia, the discovery, and the reversal function together as parts of the plot in a way that enables the plot to do its work without the presence of character. The entire action of the play turns on these three parts. A mistake is made, the discovery is the discovery of the mistake, and this is followed by or coincides with the reversal of the entire action. The actions or events, which the plot orders into a total action, require agents or doers, but the character of the agents is not revealed. Aristotle demonstrates this when he gives the plot of Iphigenia:

A young girl is sacrificed; she disappears mysteriously from the eyes of those who sacrificed her; she is transported to another country, where the custom is to offer up all strangers to the goddess. To this ministry she is appointed. Some time later her own brother chances to arrive. The fact that the oracle for some reason ordered him to go there, is outside the general plan of the play. However, he comes, he is seized, and when on the point of being sacrificed, reveals who he is … he exclaims very naturally: "So it was not my sister only, but I too, who was doomed to be sacrificed," and by that remark he is saved.³⁴

Merely to read this account, knowing nothing else about the play, does indeed make us thrill with horror and melt with pity at what takes place. There is no definition of character here. There are agents certainly. There are actions. And there is suffering narrowly averted, but there is no character. In fact such an intimate exchange between brother and sister would seem to make the addition of character superfluous.

Again let us look at Aristotle's summary of the Odyssey.

A certain man is absent from home for many years; he is jealously watched by Poseidon, and left desolate. Meanwhile his home is in a wretched plight—suitors are wasting his substance and plotting against his son. At length, tempest-tossed, he himself arrives; he makes certain persons acquainted with him; he attacks the suitors with his own hand, and is himself preserved while he destroys them.³⁵

"This is the essence of the plot," Aristotle concludes, "the rest is episode." The likely exclamation, "The rest is episode, indeed!" invokes the distinction between story and plot. Such summaries, it may be countered, correspond to the general form or outline which Aristotle advises the poet to work out first. The "tempest tossed" corresponds to the episodes with which the poet fills out the general plan. But Aristotle, himself, makes no distinction between plot and story. He uses the terms, mythos and logos, interchangeably. For the Iphigenia he uses mythos, for the Odyssey, logos. Else accepts the identification of the two.³⁶ These summaries give the main events and give them in their proper order. Character has dropped out entirely; the wily Odysseus is simply "a certain man."

Here another point may be pressed: These summaries set forth the action so that the character of the agent is bound to drop out. To put this criticism in another way, it could be urged that one can define an action so generically as to render the delineation of character unnecessary. This is a very serious criticism. It correlates with the view that when the episodes are filled in, character emerges. Thus the details of Odysseus's journey will show him to be wily. This is House's thesis when he argues that the plot guarantees the individuality of character.

How shall we answer this objection? We can only say, "Look!" Look at the plots without prejudging the issue one way or the other. Above all let us look at the plots which Aristotle especially recommends. Take the Iphigenia. Without doubt, as in almost any extensive narration, the very scope of the terrain to be covered will make it very difficult to avoid some minimal sketching in of character if only to fill out the play. But it is by no means true that all plots require character to the same extent and the plots which Aristotle favors scarcely seem to require it at all. The tragic effect of the Iphigenia cannot occur unless we know something very important about the agents, namely, that they are brother and sister. To know this is to know nothing of their character and anything we might actually say as to their character could only contribute to the arousal and purging of pity and fear in some auxiliary way.

To these considerations it might be countered that although we can describe a play in which character has no part, a play that turns on plot, there cannot be tragedy in the fullest sense where there is no delineation of character. This is Butcher's contention.³⁷ We can have drama, but not a tragedy, presumably a play arousing pity and fear and achieving catharsis.

In the Rhetoric Aristotle defines pity as

a feeling of pain caused by the sight of some evil, destructive or painful, which befalls one who does not deserve it, and which we might expect to befall ourselves or some friend of ours … "³⁸

He concludes later,

Most piteous of all is it when, in such times of trial, the victims are persons of noble character; whenever they are so our pity is especially excited, because their innocence, as well as the setting of their misfortune before our eyes makes their misfortunes seem close to ourselves.³⁹

The Poetics tells us simply that "… pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves."⁴⁰ Learning that a sister has accidentally killed her brother inspires us with pity over her undeserved misfortune. Now it is indeed possible that if the sister were known to be Lucretia Borgia we might well feel that her misfortune was a case of "poetic justice." This is a negative consideration that must be acknowledged. Might some one then press that this acknowledgment concedes the case for character?

Aristotle gives two very different specifications of the character of the hero, namely, that he should be good or noble and that he should be like ourselves. These two approaches are reflected in the Poetics itself where we find that Aristotle sometimes requires that the hero be good and at other times requires that he be like ourselves. What is it to be like ourselves? It is not to be good. We are told in the Rhetoric that

most men tend to be bad, slaves to greed, and cowards in danger … [and] as a rule men do wrong to others whenever they have the power to do it. ⁴¹

Else argues that although to be like ourselves and to be good are irreconcilable, he maintains that the homoios should not be taken as a separate category introducing another object of imitation.⁴² His argument, interesting as it is, does not respect Aristotle's observation that the poet must of necessity represent men as better, worse, or as they are.⁴³ The examples given are Homer who makes man better, Cleophon who makes them as they are, and Nicochares who makes men worse than they are.⁴⁴ Furthermore, Sophocles is quoted as saying that he drew men as they ought to be; Euripides as they are.⁴⁵ And we might note here that Aristotle points to Euripides as the one who is felt to be "the most tragic of the poets."⁴⁶ When Aristotle says that the hero must be good he explains summarily that the character of the hero is good if his intention is good.⁴⁷ But to arouse pity the disaster does not have to occur to a good man. It must only be undeserved. This necessary innocence is established by the fact that a mistake was made in ignorance as well as ort the basis of the most general assumption as to the character of the hero. Only a monster, a Nero, deserves to kill his father and marry his mother unwittingly. In this regard, it is striking that Aristotle allows a quasi-pity for a bad man who is punished. He tells us that, although this would inspire neither pity nor fear (hence a plot concerning the downfall of an utter villain is inappropriate for tragedy), the fall of a bad man does arouse philanthropia,⁴⁸ "human feeling," or, more precisely, sympathy. Because the tragedies with which Aristotle is concerned occur within the context of the family, because, concommitantly, the reversal is so terrible, character is not indispensable. The tragic effect will occur without it.

Obviously a tragedy with character is better than one without character. Nobody would contest this. The best tragedy has all six parts. And character is, after all, second in importance among the parts. But, as I have pointed our before, to judge that something makes a thing better is not to hold that it is necessary.⁴⁹ This point is crucial and it is connected with the separability of the parts of tragedy. Plot does not, ipso facto, involve character. Furthermore, character is not rendered necessary because it makes tragedy better. This is fundamentally Aristotle's view. The good and the necessary should not be confused. The fact that character makes a work better, but is not necessary, becomes a normative principle for the construction of a good play. "Do not stake your all on character," Aristotle seems to be saying. This is especially useful instruction for a working poet, for, according to Aristotle, "Beginners succeed earlier with the Diction and Characters than with the construction of the story (Plot)."⁵⁰ Thus he advises the poet not to stake his all on character because there may be tragedy without character; there cannot be tragedy without plot.

Notes

¹ Aristotle Poetics VI. 1450^a, trans. S. H. Butcher. Bywater reads: "Besides this, a tragedy is impossible without action, but there may be one without Character." I draw on both translations throughout.

² Catherine Lord, "Organic Unity Reconsidered," JAAC (Spring 1964) and "Unity with Impunity," JAAC (Fall, 1967).

³Poetics VI. 1449^b 24-26.

⁴Poetics VI. 1450^b 12.

⁵Poetics VI. 1450^b 8.

⁶Poetics VI. 1450^a 5.

⁷ Humphry House, Aristotle's Poetics (London, 1961), Ch. V, p. 80.

⁸Poetics VI. 1450^a 15.

⁹Poetics VI. 1450^a 19.

¹⁰ House, Ch. V, p. 79.

¹¹Poetics Ch. VIII, 1451^a 33-34.

¹²Poetics VI. 1450^a 39.

¹³Poetics XIV. 1453^b 5.

¹⁴Unity with Impunity (especially).

¹⁵Poetics XIX. 1456^b 1.

¹⁶Poetics XIV. 1452^a 39.

¹⁷Poetics VI. 1450^b 18.

¹⁸Poetics VI. 1449^b 29.

¹⁹ Aristotle, Politics, trans. B. Jowett (Oxford), Bk. VIII, Ch. 6.

²⁰Poetics VI. 1450^a 29-31.

²¹Poetics XIX. 1456^b 5.

²² House, VI, 5, p. 94.

²³ Gerald F. Else, The Argument of Aristotle's Poetics (Harvard Univ. Press, 1963), Ch. 13, pp. 376-399.

²⁴ Richmond Lattimore, Story Patterns in Greek Tragedy (Univ. of London, 1964), Ch. I, p. 10: "Professor Else has demonstrated with I think complete and sensational success that the famous Aristotelian hamartia can mean neither fault, or flaw, in character, nor yet an error in judgment, but simply a mistake about the identity of a person."

²⁵ House, Lecture VI, 5, p. 95.

²⁶ Else, Ch. 13, p. 379.

²⁷Poetics XIV. 1454^a 5.

²⁸Poetics VI. 1450^a 13.

²⁹Poetics XIV. 1453^b 15-20.

³⁰Poetics XI. 1452^a 31.

³¹Poetics VI. 1450^b 10-11.

³²Poetics VI. 1450^b 1.

³³Poetics XIV. 1453^b 5-6.

³⁴Poetics XVII. 1455^b 3-12.

³⁵Poetics XVII. 1455^b 16-24.

³⁶ Else, Ch. 6, pp. 243-244.

³⁷ S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts, Ch. 9, p. 344.

³⁸ Aristotle Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts (Oxford), BK. II, 8, 1385^b 13-15.

³⁹Rhetoric, Bk. II, 8, 1386^b 5-10.

⁴⁰Poetics XII. 1453^a 5-6.

⁴¹Rhetoric, Bk. II, Ch. 5, 1382^b 10.

⁴² Else, Ch. 15, pp. 475-483.

⁴³Poetics II. 1448^a 1-2 and XXV, 1460^b 9-10.

⁴⁴Poetics II. 1448^a 11-13.

⁴⁵Poetics XXV. 1460^b 35-36.

⁴⁶Poetics XIII. 1453^a 29-30.

⁴⁷Poetics XV. 1454^a 19.

⁴⁸Poetics XIII. 1453^a 2.

⁴⁹Unity with Impunity, pp. 105-106.

⁵⁰Poetics VI. 1450^a 35-38.