The blind energies and defiant acts that bring an ambitious man to power can also destroy him. This is the theme that Thomas Hardy explores through his portrait of his greatest and most tragic hero--Michael Henchard, the self-driven grain merchant of Casterbridge. From his drunken sale of his wife and baby at a country fair to his subjugation of a farming village, Henchard'd life is an epic attempt to bring the world to heel as he hides, even from himself, all vestiges of emotional vulnerability.