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Tragic flaw is a concept derived from Aristotle's poetics which was extremely popular in the 19th century and still has currency among schoolteachers who use older textbooks.

The idea is this: Tragedies have to have tragic heroes, main characters who have something bad happen to them. We have to sympathize with the tragic heroes, or otherwise we would conclude that they deserve what they get. But it is unfair to God to say that bad things happen to people because, well, they happen that way. We have to say that bad things happen to people because they have something wrong with them. This need to point a moralistic finger means that although we might think that the tragic hero is mostly good, there is something wrong with him. This "something wrong" is called a "tragic flaw".

The need to find these permanent flaws in people's characters has driven students to distraction trying to find some quality in the hero they can deplore and say "There! That's why the bad things happened to him."

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