Throughout literary history tragic heroes have managed to deceive everyone but themselves. The tragedy lies in the fact that the they believe they can fool themselves as well as everyone else. Tragic heroes always seem to bring their own downfall upon themselves just when the believe they are invincible. This sense of hubris will bring about the downfall of families, communities and even entire empires. Nowhere in literature is this Hubris more apparent than in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare's Macbeth, and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. These are stories written in very different times, with different social climates and societal expectations, and by authors of very different backgrounds. The one major quality these three tragedies share is that they are all based on the idea of Hubris, in self deception and perception.

"There is no tragedy in the expulsion of evil: the tragedy is that this involves the waste of good." (Bradley)

The three characters are not evil people, at least not when they are initially introduced, but are caught in a whirlwind of self-promotion. This windstorm is one that is powered not by weather fronts, but the fronts p

"Tragedy discerns a principle goodness that coexists with evil. Tragic man is man at his most prideful and independent, man glorying in his humanity." (Sewall)

Jay Gatsby's downfall comes about for completely different reasons. Gatsby had one reason to build his empire, love. There is nothing evil about that justification, in fact it makes him the most innocent, if not the only innocent character in "Gatsby", and the only innocent of the three title characters. What then is his evil downfall? Simply it is the over glorification of dreams. He built himself up from nothing for Daisy and her love. The tragedy is that the higher he got the more warped his memory of Daisy and their relationship became. He fooled everyone else into thinking that he was a rich socialite, but never himself. He always knew he was a poor boy living a dream for a dream. A dream that was so far from reality that it is evil. It is tragic that Gatsby wasted the good traits, perseverance and work ethic, he needed to build himself for a one way, if not false love.

ut up by the tragic heroes to portray themselves as worthy. From this storm of deception, out comes the evil and villainous nature of the reasonably good title characters. This is because even if they were fooling the populace they still doubted their own worthiness, due to the fact they, Oedipus, Macbeth and Gatsby, had not fooled themselves. Their relentless pursuit of perfection corrupted their otherwise good nature. Thus their removal from the position they held was ultimately necessary. It is tragic because they were good, good people and good leaders.

Oedipus, Macbeth and Gatsby were all self critical perfectionists, for whom nothing was ever good enough. Their personal dignity lost its strength when there were close, but not on, the next level of power and accomplishment. They had always fooled others into believing that they were good enough at the point at which they were, but they always evaluated themselves as as underachievers who had not accomplished everything of which they were able. This evaluation continued until they reached a point where they felt they had superseded their ability and their deceptive charade began to crumble. They were so highly critical that it was not others who eventually crushed their personal dignity, but their own ideals of success and failure.

Oedipus as a king would have high goals, but at a certain point goals that are to high are tragic. Oedipus was an accomplished king, but his Kingdom was in famine so in order maintain his reputation as a good king he sought to correct this. To him the suffering of his people was a greater blow to his personal dignity and ideals of success than any scandal he could imagine. He sought to fix every problem that arose. This work ethic tragically

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Approximate Word count = 1893
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)