Despite his illustration of the subject's greedy pursuit of his ambitions, Tennyson had also shown redemption through Ulysses' eventual realization that success and ambition must be shared and done for the benefit of others, too: "...we are, we are, One equal-temper of heroic hearts..."
In a similar depiction of male ambition, Dickens in the novel "A Christmas Carol" illustrated how the character of Scrooge embodied moral degeneration as a result of greed and bitterness. The ambitious Scrooge was characterized by his townspeople and employees as an "ogre," especially for the Cratchit family wherein "[t]he mention of his name cast a dark shadow..." Realizing his errors in life through the Three Ghosts of Christmas, Scrooge redeemed himself by changing his ways, a moral conversion showed through generosity and...
His realization that he had not lived a meaningful and satisfying life brought about his desire to end his ambitious desires, which inevitably meant killing the very thing that gave him these ambitions and his life. Indeed, this realization and redemption through death was foretold by Basil the painter of the famed portrait of Dorian Gray: "Dorian Gray...has a simple and a beautiful nature... Don't take away from me the one person who gives my art whatever charm it possesses..."
