"Those qualities which make a character heroic (or admirable or exceptional) may also cause his suffering or destrucion. To what extent is this statement true of a character in Hamlet?".
Who is Hamlet? Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps or those of others; whoever has borne about with him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought himself "too much i' th' sun;" whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it; whoever has known "the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes;" he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who has had his hopes blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things; who cannot well be at ease, while he sees evil hovering near him like a spectre; whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bitterness of soul makes him careless of consequences, and who goes to a play as his best resource is to shove off, to a second remove, the evils of life by a mock representation of them - this is the true Hamlet. .
And the qualities, which make this masterpiece of Shakespeare -Hamlet - a heroic character, have certainly laid him vulnerable to sufferings and destructions in his life.
The character of Hamlet is cursed with the characteristics that create a tragic hero. These characteristics include his one tragic flaw and how he suffers from it, his nobility in life and in admitting his flaw, and finally his salvation and how he realizes why he must keep a good soul.
All tragic heroes possess one characteristic, or flaw, that causes suffering in their personal lives. Hamlet's tragic flaw is his indecisiveness, which stems from his fear of being sent to hell for his sins on Earth.