Indices of the Hegelian Tragedy in Patience Swift’s the Last Good Man

This study examines tragic vision in Patience Swift’s The Last Good Man with the aim of establishing the claim that, following the postulations on tragedy by G.W.F Hegel, the tragedy in the novel is both inevitable and paradoxical—inevitable, since the protagonist’s world is tragically circumscribed, with no escaping the tragic entrapment, which does not have to be determined by his being good or bad; and paradoxical because he is great and as well flawed, with his greatness being his flaw. The approach to tragedy developed by the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel is the interpretive strategy adopted, a reading strategy which was structured in such a manner as to take into account the catastrophic conclusion, the sense of inevitability, human limitation, suffering and disproportion, and the learning process and acceptance of moral responsibility in the novel. Critics may be tempted to only look at the human limitations of the protagonist, which is a fundamental element of a tragic hero—hubris—without taking into consideration the sense of inevitability and the intricacies of the hero’s situation. Because Sam acts both for and against the good, his individuality is as paradoxical as the situation in which he finds himself; hence he is both great and flawed—indeed, his very greatness is his flaw, since greatness in Hegel comes at the price of excluding what the situation demands. Perhaps this is the first study of the novel as tragedy that will take into account the above strategy of reading.