Perception, Manipulation, and Free Will in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter

Abstract

Perception, or the lack thereof, plays an overwhelmingly large part in forming characters’ decisions in Shakespeare’s Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Misperception is born from careful manipulation of the protagonist’s pre-existing flaws, or their tragic flaws. The decisions evolving from misperception cause their downfalls. Though just a children’s series, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter contains many of the same elements of a Shakespearean tragedy and can be read in the context of this genre. In both these authors’ works, the argument of fate versus free will is called into question. I argue that it is the character’s decisions that create the situations that many have read as fate.