Aristotle first discovered the idea of the tragic man and recorded it in The Elements of Drama. Although the characteristics that he drafted were based from his experience with the Greek theater, the tragic man exists in multiple forms of art and literature. For example, many scholars consider Captain Ahab from Moby Dick a tragic man. Ernest Hemingway embraces the idea of a tragic man to show how modern literature portrays heroes. The heroes of …showed first 75 words of 872 total…

…showed last 75 words of 872 total…conflict like all tragic men and so he was trapped in the battle with the fish. His fight ended with him gaining nothing. Santiago failed because he did not return with the fish after several days fighting the marlin. Hemingway needed to make Santiago a tragic man in order to display the theme that the solitary struggle ends in failure or defeat. Tragic men are all over from the Greek tragedies to the modern novels.