This unit is designed to be taught in the high school English curriculum in segments of two week intervals over a total of six weeks, staggered throughout the school year. Three major works, appropriate to high school students in grades ten through twelve, are selected to be taught in sequence. Beginning with Greek tragedy and introducing the Greek tragic hero, this first portion of the unit is to define the basis and need for these figures in society then as well as today. Tragic heroes, being elevated from humanity by greatness, have lost touch with much of their "mortalness" and believe themselves to be above man-made and universal laws. This arrogance illustrates the evil borne of self-will-run-riot, and the price the hero pays for squelching all opposition to his will. When the hero loses control, so goes rationality. The works selected from three distinct periods are Antigone by Sophocles from Greek tragedy, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare from the Elizabethan era, and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe -- a contemporary Nigerian author documenting the African experience during the British colonization and exploitation of Africa in the 1AA0's. Though these works are hundreds of years apart, their essence of truth remains the same -- that our elevated tragic hero will be brought down to earth again and reclaim the human-ness and vulnerability he has sought to leave behind.