2. ► The tragedy is an imitation of an action. ► The plot recounts an important series of events and is the most important element in tragedy. ► The tragedy must provide catharsis, or spiritual purge. The audience must feel pity and fear from what they see on stage.

3. ► The hero must be a significant and an honorable person. ► The character should be good. ► He should be appropriate and life- like. ► He should be consistent.

4. ► A flaw, error or defect in the tragic hero that leads to the hero’s downfall.

5. ► An error, mistaken judgment or misstep through which the hero succumbs to misfortune. ► This error is not necessarily a flaw in his character (fatal flaw) but it does move the character from happiness to misery.

6. ► A beneficial effect tragedy has on spectators. ► Perhaps the viewer learns to avoid the pitfalls to which the hero succumbed. ► Perhaps the opportunity to vicariously experience fear and pity is emotionally cleansing. ► The hero can become a scapegoat for the viewer’s hopes and faults.

7. ► EXCESSIVE PRIDE ► Arrogance that results in the misfortune of the protagonist (or hero) in a tragedy. ► Hubris leads the hero to break a moral law or ignore a divine warning with disastrous results.

8. ► In drama, the discovery of recognition that leads to the reversal. ► In other words… when the hero recognizes he has done wrong and then corrects himself (if not too late).

9. ► The reversal of fortune for the protagonist in a dramatic or fictional plot, whether to his fall in a tragedy or his success in a comedy.

10. ► The three Greek Fates, offspring of either Zeus and Themis, or of Night by her lonesome. They dealt out and then cut off the thread of every person’s life.

11. ► The Greek word for imitation