Fatal Flaw: Definition & Examples
- Melchior Antoine
- Aug 30
- 10 min read
Updated: Oct 14
The concept of the fatal flaw is crucial in works of literature, especially works that are described as tragedy. A fatal flaw can help give credibility or verisimilitude to a protagonist. It can also help explain the behavior or internal conflict that motivates a character. So what exactly is it? Let’s give a go at a formal definition of the term:
A character's fatal flaw is a negative trait or fateful decision that ultimately leads to their personal tragedy or ruin.
The fatal flaw in ancient Greek Theater was referred to as hamartia, which roughly translates into "to err." It is sometimes difficult to separate the fatal flaw from character agency, that is, a character who comes to ruin as a result of their own personal choice or action. As a result, it is sometimes argued that the fatal flaw can be defined as the fateful decision taken by a character that drives the plot of the story and decides their fate.
In fact, often, in literary analysis, you will find that the character's failings and moral decisions are inseparable from each other, and readers long after are left to question the extent to which a heroic or tragic character bears the blame or responsibility for their tragic fate. A good example of this is Antigone in the Greek play named after her — Antigone.
1. Antigone: Character agency vs. fatal flaw
Antigone is a heroic figure who decided to bury her brother who was killed in battle outside the walls of the city of Thebes in defiance of the tyrant king, Creon, who is also her uncle. The brother in question is Polynices, who is killed by his own brother, Eteocles, in a kind of mutual-double homicide, with the two killing each other in battle.
Eteocles is treated by Creon as a hero of Thebes who dies defending his city, whereas Polynices is treated as a traitor of Thebes, not even worthy of a proper burial. Antigone is faced with the choice of following the laws of the state as personified by Creon’s tyrannical decree and the laws of the gods of the dead and her familial duty to her brother.
She chooses to defy Creon and bury her brother ceremonially in secrecy. After Creon discovers her crime, she is buried alive and commits suicide by hanging herself. The choice to bury her brother was hardly a difficult one for her. She has no internal conflict when making the decision and acts with absolute clarity and purpose. In fact, she is even offended when her own sister, Ismene, refuses to join her, and, more or less, cuts her sister off for it. Here is a look at their conversation:
Antigone, Scene 1:
ANTIGONE:
I’m not going to force you, but even if you change
Your mind, I won’t accept your help now.
Do what you think is right; I will bury him.
It’s a beautiful thing, to die in this act.
With him I will rest, beloved with beloved,
And I will be a god-fearing criminal. I need to please
The gods of death more than the men on Earth,
As I will rest below forever. But if you think it best,
Go ahead and dishonor what the gods honor.
ISMENE:
I’m not dishonoring anyone! And even still, I’m just a woman!
Only men get a say in how the city’s run, you know that.
ANTIGONE:
You can make that your excuse— I will bury my brother.
Here, we get a hint of the type of character Antigone is: She is resolute and uncompromising. Not only does she disagree with her sister’s refusal to join her to defy the king, but she even says, "Don’t even bother to change your mind." This suggests the type of character flaw she suffers from — pride.
She is so confident in her rightness that she is willing to turn her back and condemn even her own sister. Perhaps, she is a heroic figure who defies a tyrant and is loyal to her brother and the gods of death and common human decency. However, the attitude towards her sister betrays an unwillingness to compromise and a certain level of egotism. Surely, Ismene is reasonable in claiming that there is danger in burying their brother in a city where women have no rights and where no man is brave enough to challenge the king's decree.
Should we count her egotism against Antigone? Should her pride be seen as the fatal flaw that does her in? Perhaps, she could have attempted to compromise or negotiate burying her brother with Creon, who is after all her uncle. She is also engaged to Creon’s son Haemon, which could have afforded her leverage in negotiating with the king. However, this is hardly a convincing argument.
Later in the play, we see that Creon is such a stubborn tyrant that he ignores appeals from his son and even a messenger of the gods, the blind seer Teresias, whom he even insults. A woman, such as Antigone, would hardly stand a chance in convincing such a man to change his mind.
So, again, can Antigone’s pride be counted as a fatal flaw? We can say that the pride we see in Antigone helps show her as a fallible human character. It takes neither a saint nor an ordinary individual to stand up against an injustice when no one else is willing to. Character flaws help show the weakness of a character, making them more credible and human, which is the case here with Antigone. We can go so far as to say that Antigone's fatal flaw was not a character failing, but her brave and consequential decision to stand up to a tyrant. In short, a fatal flaw, in addition to being a character failing, can also be a moral decision taken by a character with full agency.
Her pride is exactly the character trait that we expect from an extraordinary individual who is brave enough to stand up against an unjust king. It also explains to some extent the source of her agency. At the end of the day, Antigone is ruined because she makes the personal choice to act morally and heroically in the face of tyranny. Her sense of pride may have partially informed her choice. In this aspect, her agency and heroic bravery explain her fate better than any character failing.
2. The fatal flaw in Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth makes for an interesting character analysis and arc. She is a character who suffers from both an internal conflict and a fatal flaw. Lady Macbeth suppresses her own humanity to support her husband’s ambition to gain the Scottish throne. She believes that her husband is too full of the “milk of human kindness” (Act 1, Scene 5) to commit the murder of King Duncan, which would allow him to become king himself.
When Macbeth decides against his initial plans to murder King Duncan, she responds in the following way:
I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
This is a horrific perversion of the natural maternal instinct, which is embraced by Lady Macbeth. She seems to understand that killing a righteous king for no other reason but ambition is immoral and unnatural. However, she only has a superficial understanding of the true nature of the crime that she and her husband are about to commit and her bravado is a hollow facade.
We see glimpses of the deep disturbances in her conscience and soul every now and then just before and after the murder of Duncan. For example, in a soliloquy in Act 2, Scene 2, she justifies to herself why she herself won’t kill Duncan by claiming that he resembled her father as he slept.
The inhuman suppression of her conscience and guilt can only go on for so long. The unnatural suppression leads to her starting to sleepwalk, which we see in Act 5, Scene 1. Immediately after the murder of Duncan with both her hands and her husband’s covered in blood, she claims “A little water clears us of this deed” (Act 2, Scene 2).
In the sleepwalking scene, we see her in an altogether different attitude. She is confessing and re-enacting the murder of Duncan in front of witnesses, expressing intense guilt and remorse while doing so:
Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!
Lady Macbeth’s fatal flaw is her willingness to suppress her own humanity and conscience in unnatural ways. Such suppression can only last for so long. The internal conflict and tension between her innate humanity and her ambition and willingness to act unnaturally to fulfill this ambition eventually leads to her madness and suicide.
3. Othello’s internalization of racial hostility
Othello is one of the more famous tragic characters in Shakespeare. His is the tragic story of a Moor or Black man living in Venice, who is tricked into believing that his wife is cuckolding him before strangling her to death. In the case of the play Othello, the main character's fatal flaw is complicated and directly related to the tension between his self-identity, race, class, and status as a foreigner in Venice. He is in a peculiar position.
He’s Black and likely a former Muslim in a white and Christian society, which is traditionally prejudiced and hostile toward Black people and Muslims. At the same time, he is a decorated general with social class and prestige who leads the armies of Venice and who is typically shown the respect and honor that such a position demands.
However, this contradiction creates an internal conflict within Othello. Othello is alienated because of his race. The racial hostility and animus that exist toward him are always lying just beneath the surface and erupt at the slightest sign of tension. For example, Brabantio, the father of Desdemona, the woman he elopes with, questions him directly to his face as to why his daughter would ever run to “the sooty bosom of a thing such as thou” (Act 1, Scene 2).
This racial hostility is internalized by Othello. His internalization of this hostility becomes self-hate, which the villain Iago uses to his advantage. Iago, in tricking Othello, tells him to be suspicious of Desdemona’s faithfulness because, after all she chose him, a Moor, when she had the option of choosing fairer compatriots. Othello’s internal securities result in what seems like a perversion.
He is willing to believe that his faithful wife is cheating on him, as his internalization of the racial hostility toward him makes him feel unworthy of Desdemona’s love. This explains his famous and ironic lines to Iago: “Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore” (Act 3, Scene 2). When Othello is convinced that Desdemona is being unfaithful, he says that her name is “now begrimed and black / As mine own face," turning his very face into an ugly metaphor. We can say that Othello’s fatal flaw is the internalization of self-hate, which creates the insecurity that leads to his downfall.
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4. Hamlet: The reluctant prince
Hamlet is Shakespeare's most famous play. The fatal flaw of its main character is obvious. He is predisposed to inaction. This makes him overthink and indecisive. His father, the former king of Denmark, was murdered by his own uncle, King Claudius. Hamlet is caught between avenging his father by killing Claudius, or as he says in his famous "to be or not to be" speech, "in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (Act 3, Scene 1).
A good example of the prince's indecision is when he comes across King Claudius as the king prays, presenting a perfect opportunity to kill the man who murdered his father. He is resolved to kill the king using what appears to be sound and righteous logic:
Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying,
And now I’ll do ’t. (He draws his sword.)
And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven. (Act 3, Scene 3)
However, Hamlet reasons himself out of this resolve. He argues wih himself that Claudius if killed while praying, would go to heaven as praying means cleansing one's soul of all wrongdoing. As far as he is concerned, Claudius should burn in hell and heavenis too good a place forheaven is him. So, he decides he should wait when Claudius is drunk or committing some sort of sin that would condemn his soul:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed,
At game, a-swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in ’t—
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, where to it goes.
Hamlet never gets any such opportunity. Instead, oy of passion and frustration, while arguing with his mother in teh famous Closet Scene, he spies a spy behind the curtains, thinks it's Cladius, and stabs. He ends up killing the wrong man, Polonius, who was spying on behalf of King Claudius. The play ends in confusion and death. Claudius is killed by Hamlet, but only after Claudius formulates a plot that sees Hamlet and his mother poisoned to death. Hamlet, to the very end, even if he gets a measure of revenge, suffers from his lack of action as his enemies, unlike him, do not hesitate to act upon their plans and desires.
However, there's an alternative view to the fatal flaw in Hamlet. Hamlet's fatal flaw is not his indecision. Instead, it is his haste decision to take the law into his own hands. His refusal to kill King Claudius during the prayer scene was the right one in this view. After all, what kind of hero kills a rival as he prays and his back is turned? Hamlet is a play whose message is steeped in the Christian moral philosophy of the Elizabethan era. In this moral philosophy, "Thou shalt not kill" and "Vengeance is the Lord's" are paramount, especially considering the allegiance of the noble classes to the political order under the king.
This strictly interpreted means that killing can only be justified as a form of self-defense or through lawful means when administered by ministers of the state, who have been ordained by heaven. So, we can say that the Closet Scene is the climax of the play that seals Hamlet's fate. After killing Polonius, his son Laertes conspires with King Claudius to poison Hamlet in a fixed fencing match. In that regard, Hamlet's fatal flaw is less his indecision than his rash decision to kill Polonius by taking the law in his hands.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2025, August 30). Fatal Flaw: Definition & Examples. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/fatal-flaw |