Freedom!!!!

Some define tragedy as characterized by a seriousness and dignity involving a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune.  Including a change of fortune from bad to good, but the change from good to bad is preferable because this effects of  pity and fear within the spectators. Tragedy results in a healing for the audience through their experience of these emotions in response to the suffering of the characters in the drama.

No movie shows this definition like Braveheart and his main character William Wallace. William Wallace is the perfect tragic hero. Even though he is not of noble social background, he is an educated Scottish hat have earn some privileges from the England invaders. He witnesses his own downfall when he marries Murron and they are caught and Murron is executed. Wallace is now compelled to rebel against the English, and as his legend spreads, hundreds of Scots from the surrounding clans join him. At the end of all the fighting, Wallace is brought before an English magistrate, tried for high treason, and condemned to public torture and beheading. Even after being hanged and mutilated, Wallace refuses to submit to the king by begging for mercy. As cries for mercy come from the watching crowd, the magistrate offers him one final chance. Wallace instead shouts the word "Freedom!" Just before the axe falls, Wallace sees a vision of Murron in the crowd smiling at him. This scene shows some supernatural or unusual condition that a tragic hero has to have. But his death is not in vein, years after Wallace's death, Robert the Bruce, Scotland's king, leads a Scottish army before a ceremonial line of English troops on the fields of Bannockburn where he is to formally accept English rule. As he begins to ride toward the English, the Bruce stops and turns back to his troops. Invoking Wallace's memory, he implores them to fight with him as they did with Wallace. He then leads his army into battle against the stunned English, winning the Scots their freedom.

The spectator watching this movie is moved by the suffering that William Wallace endured before his death.