I think it is important to understand the characteristics
of a tragic hero to write your essay.
A tragic hero will
often be noble, not necessarily in social status, but in
terms of character. Romeo fulfills this as he puts the feud of the families behind him.
He asks Benvolio in the first act about the "fray" that he missed. He tries to give
Tybalt reason in Act 3 for loving, rather than calling him a villain. Sometimes this
nobility turns out to be a flaw as we saw Tybalt take advantage of it in Act
3.
A tragic hero will also experience
consequences based on his own errors. Romeo ends up returning to Juliet's
tomb and killing himself because he was not patient enough to wait for the Friar's
messages. It was certainly a problem that the message could not get through, but Romeo
did not need to rush into killing himself. This impulsive behavior was a flaw that
plagued Romeo throughout our experience watching him on
stage.
A tragic hero often
knows that his fate is sealed by doom and
downfall. This flaw is a problem because it is a self-fulfilling
prophesy. Both Romeo and Juliet foreshadow their own and each other's deaths throughout
the text. The reason this is a problem is because it is like because they say it, they
begin to believe it. Juliet mentions this when she says her goodbye to Romeo in Act IV,
Romeo mentions it in his dream in Act V, scene i. They both seem to reference death in
Act I scene v and Act II scene ii.
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