- Hamlet is indecisive
- Macbeth is ambitious (or his wife is and he is hen-pecked, depending on your reading)
- Oedipus is arrogant
- Frankenstein and Faust both seek knowledge without responsibility
Heroic journeys with happy endings often involve the protagonist overcoming the fatal flaw. Thus, Odysseus, whose fatal flaw is a cocksure over-confidence in his own cleverness, is boastful and arrogant after blinding Polyphemus the Cyclops; this leads to Poseidon (the god of the sea and father of Polyphemus) punishing him by making him travel around (and even outside) the Mediterranean. It is not until Odysseus is utterly humiliated by losing all his men and being shipwrecked and cast up naked on a beach that he is sufficiently psychologically rehabilitated that he can be allowed to return to his wife. Thus the Odyssey, as well as being a saga of one man battling against the monsters of the sea, is also a psychological journey.
This, imho, is what makes a story great. Yes, the protagonist must battle with external forces but in a classic story this battle moulds and shapes and develops the inner-protagonist; they are heroic in that they overcome their own inner weaknesses or demons. (Or don’t, in which case it’s a tragedy.)
When a protagonist is wonderful from the start, without a fatal flaw, then the only thing they can battle is external forces and this leads to a thriller-style plot without any character development. It’s the difference between Batman and Superman. Batman is no more than a mortal man with gadgets and even though we as readers/ viewers known he won’t die, in theory he could be killed, so there is far more tension than in the classic Superman story in which Superman is effectively invulnerable (except for Kryptonite which, therefore, must be wheeled out again and again). And the very best Batman stories explore his psychological weaknesses which are the reasons he became what is, in effect, a vigilante.
In the early James Bond stories (eg Casino Royale), there was a real sense that our hero was vulnerable; most of the clones feature a protagonist who is so bloody wonderful (marksman, athlete, lover, sophisticate, connoisseur etc) that there is no room for any flaw. I find these stories with their too-good-to-be-true heroes not only implausible but also lacking in tension.
Unflawed protagonists can only ever battle against external odds. Flawed protagonists battle against the world and themselves, allowing an exploration of their character, allowing more complex characters and therefore creating a much more interesting story.
Unfortunately, modern fiction seems to teem with unflawed protagonists:
- Kya in Where the Crawdads Sing has to battle her upbringing, her environment, her society, an abusive lover and finally a murder charge but she is so bloody perfect that she even learns to read in a few weeks.
- Elizabeth in Lessons in Chemistry is amazingly clever, stunningly attractive and morally strong; her daughter is even more of a prodigy.
- The Count in A Gentleman in Moscow has is sentenced to lifelong house arrest in a hotel, nevertheless he never despairs (his suicide attempt is more of a protest and he quickly persuades himself out of it) and is always debonair and charming and he becomes a respected leader in the hotel community and outside.
- Lucrezia in The Marriage Portrait might not fit into society but she is in tune with nature, she is intelligent, she has an unconventional beauty, and she is an artist with an amazing natural talent
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