The Hypochondriac Analysis

The Hypochondriac Analysis

The Hypochondriac conforms to views on Aristotelian importance of character in drama that suggests “If the protagonist had by nature a 'flaw' that steered him more or less inevitably into a fatal situation, he would be a mechanism and predictable to us, incapable of inducing terror or recognition" (Aristotle 27). Nothing about Argan seems as inevitable as just about any protagonist in a rigidly plotted Aristotelian tragedy. If it may be beyond argument that Aristotle places plot above character, with The Hypochondriac Moliere dares to disagree by proposing that a more realistically drawn character without the baggage of a fatal flaw can be all the more recognizable.

Moliere might be desiring to turn Aristotelian conventions on its head and place character at the forefront of narrative importance might well be explained by virtue of his decision to open his comedy with a monologue that examines the use of language and diction through a purposely repetitive speech by his protagonist.

“Thirty sous for a clyster! I have already told you, with all due

respect to you, that elsewhere you have only charged me twenty sous;

and twenty sous, in the language of apothecaries, means only ten sous.

Here they are, these ten sous” (Moliere, 1959).

That opening monologue spoken by Argan repeats the word “sous” almost twenty times and its near-rhyming twin “you” only slightly less often (Moliere, 1959). The repetitive quality of this opening scene is more than a little suggestive that the playwright may just possibly be making a somewhat snarky commentary on Aristotle’s consideration of the essential elements of drama.

If the placement of character above plot and the decision to open the play with a potentially ironic statement on the placement of lofty