K. J. Somaiya

Moral vision of a play must not be understood apart from character, since character is vision. Abraham Maslow, the “father” of American humanism, expounded the theory of self-actualization. Taking into consideration the preferences given to different needs of human beings, Maslow created the hierarchy of needs. The top most level is self-actualization. According to Abraham Maslow, self-actualization is reaching one’s full potential. The self-actualized people have factual insights about themselves, others and the environment around them. They exercise their inborn strengths beyond their fundamental requirements and try to probe and achieve full human capacity. The tragic heroes, Oedipus and Lear, too undergo the process of self-actualization but only through suffering. For both, the suffering acts as a motivational factor in the process of being a better human being. Nietzsche, too, in his Birth of Tragedy, puts forward the idea that even pain acts as a stimulus for the gain of pleasure through tragedy. Both Oedipus and Lear derive stimulus from intense suffering for their self-realization and self-actualization. Maslow’s theory can be well-compared with the terms of “round” and “flat” characters proposed by E. M. Forster in his Aspects of Novel. As most of the tragic heroes, Oedipus and King Lear are the “round” characters if Forster’s term is to be applied. Oedipus and Lear both “round” up for their ultimate ‘serene deportment.