How Ambition Transforms A Tragic Hero Into A Villain
Ambition transforms tragic heroes into villains. Ambition is wanting to achieve something higher then what they have already achieved. A tragic hero is a hero that has lost something dear to them, something that holds great value to them. There are three factors that make tragic hero’s ambition that causes the hero to transform into a villain. ambitions give the tragic hero a desire for power. Ambition gives them a curiosity for trying new things. The last factor is that ambition is that it drives you to do thing that fear would stop them from doing. So, these points prove that ambition transforms a tragic hero into a villain using these three points.
Ambition gives the tragic hero a want for power. After they felt ambition for something, they crave it and want more of it to satisfy themselves. An example of this is when Macbeth was promoted but then he wanted even more power and Dr. horrible craved more power after he was provoked by captain hammer, “I’m going to give penny the night of her life, just because you like her”, these led both of them to villainy, Macbeth killed Duncan and Dr. horrible killed tried to kill Captain hammer but killed Penny by accident instead. This proves that ambition made them crave too much power and drove them to do things they wouldn’t do if they were ambitionless.
Ambitions lead to curiosity to trying new things. Before they taste power, their ambition is to see what power truly feels like and goes to get it out of curiosity. They work hard to gain that power through a heroic way at first, but then after they taste the power they want even more. This is then intensified because the power as they see it is a substitute to something they’ve lost, Dr. Horrible lost Penny to Captain Hammer, they become desperate and get the power in un-ethical ways. In Macbeth’s case killing Duncan and framing his guards to take his thrown, Dr. Horrible tried to kill Captain hammer with a death-ray even though he says, “killing’s not elegant or creative, its not my style”, he thought of killing as a bad thing before he lost Penny, but then he lost Penny to Captain hammer so he went to disparate measures to both get Penny back and join the evil league of evil by killing Captain Hammer even though mentioning that he disliked killing. This shows that ambition leads to curiosity to trying new things.
Fear is stopped by the ambition. Fear stops people from doing somethings that could cause damage to them, this factor is shut down by their ambition due to ambition seeing fear as a hindrance and not a safety system. At first, they fear many things, but after they gain ambition, they lose that fear, like when Macbeth in the ending when he goes to battle, he says, “at least we’ll die with armour on!” not even fearing death, Dr. horrible when singing slipping was extremely cocky because he was trying to impress Penny, he didn’t have the slightest ounce of fear, “yes, its two r’s. H-O-R-R, yeah” was the line he said in the middle of the crowd. This proves that fear is stopped by ambition causing them to do things they wouldn’t do if they had afraid, if Dr. horrible was filled with fear he would have shot Captain Hammer with his death ray and killed before doing anything else or make Dr. horrible take a more covert way. These points show that fear is stopped by ambition.
In conclusion, these points all prove that a tragic hero can be easily influenced by ambition and then they become greedy. Once the hero gets power they try new ways to achieve that power, this would be stopped by fear although ambition disables the function of fear. These points were proved by the stories of Macbeth and betraying the king and Dr. Horrible attempting to kill Captain Hammer. These prove my point of the influence of ambition on tragic heroes.
