essay on oedipus the king tragic hero

How is Oedipus a Tragic Hero

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Why Is Oedipus a Tragic Hero? Hubris, Hamartia, and Happenstance

Read this article to learn more about this literary dispute, and then judge for yourself!

Rapid Recap: A Quick Synopsis of Oedipus Rex

To understand Oedipus as a tragic hero (or not), let’s review the plot of Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, written around the Fourth Century BCE . Like Homer’s The Odyssey, the scene occurs at the end of the story, and many of the critical details are related to events that happened some time ago.

One interesting plot clue to keep in mind is that Oedipus’ name means “ swollen foot .” Apparently, he suffered an injury as an infant, and he walked with a limp all of his life.

When the play opens, King Oedipus is concerned about the plague that grips Thebes , and he tells the lamenting citizens that he has sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to consult the oracle at Delphi. On cue, Creon returns with the news that to escape the plague, they must find and punish the murderer of the former King Laius.

At the time, Queen Jocasta and the other Thebans were too busy dealing with the curse of the Sphinx to investigate Laius’ murder at the crossroads. Oedipus had saved Thebes from the Sphinx and had married the widowed Jocasta, becoming king.

Oedipus vows to find and punish the murderer, but the blind prophet Tiresias reveals that Oedipus himself is the murderer . Jocasta arrives to calm her enraged husband, and she tells him that prophecies mean nothing. In fact, she and King Laius heard a prophecy that their son, Oedipus, would kill Laius . They drove a stake through the baby’s ankles and left him to die in the forest, so the prophecy did not come true. (Or did it – remember Oedipus’ swollen feet? )

Oedipus reveals that a prophet recently told him that he would kill his father and marry his mother, and that is why he fled Corinth. However, he did kill a man at the crossroads on the way to Thebes . Little by little, the plot unravels until Oedipus is finally forced to admit that the prophecy is true. Jocasta hangs herself at the news, and Oedipus takes the brooch pin from her dress and gouges out his own eyes .

The Characteristics of a Tragic Hero, According To Aristotle

As one of the earliest tragic plays, it seems natural that Oedipus Rex would exemplify tragic hero characteristics. Aristotle was the first philosopher to analyze drama, and he used Oedipus to define tragic hero characteristics.

In Chapter Eight of Aristotle’s Poetics, a true tragic hero must possess the following qualities :

Nobility : The character must be from a high-born family or has achieved greatness somehow. With a “great” character, there is farther to “fall.”
Morality : The character must be essentially a good person, but not perfect so that the audience can empathize. (Remember that ancient Greece was a pragmatic and often brutal society, so the idea of morality is likely different for modern audiences.)
Hamartia : The character possesses a fatal flaw or weakness that leads to the character’s downfall. (Again, this is a moral person, so the hamartia should not be wicked or depraved.)
Anagnorisis : The character experiences a moment of comprehension and realizes that the downfall was self-inflicted, usually unintentionally.
Peripeteia : The character’s hamartia causes a dramatic reversal of fortune. Since the character is moral, the “punishment” is often accepted readily.
Catharsis : The character’s outcome elicits pity from the audience.

Sources differ on the exact list of traits, but Aristotle’s list is the most complete . Often, hubris, or overbearing pride, is included as a separate item in this list, while other scholars consider hubris as the character’s fatal flaw, covered under the “hamartia” bullet.

The true meaning of “hamartia” is the most hotly debated portion of this formula when considering Oedipus Rex as a tragic hero. Hamartia is discussed in detail later in this article.

Why Is Oedipus a Tragic Hero? Five of the Traits Are Undisputed

There are numerous examples of Oedipus being a tragic hero ; scholars agree that Oedipus fulfills most or all of Aristotle’s traits. First, Oedipus is nobly born, being the son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta. Further, he was adopted by the King of Corinth, technically making him the heir to two thrones. Also, Oedipus saved Thebes by defeating the Sphinx, which was a noble-hearted act.

Oedipus is also a moral person, far from perfect, but he is concerned about the right action and protecting the welfare of others . When he experiences anagnorisis, he is devastated by the atrocious act that he unwittingly committed. His devastating peripeteia, his blindness, and his exile does elicit pity from the audience.

However, which of these flaws was responsible for his downfall? Or was it the gods themselves who manipulated events for their own reasons, and Oedipus’ character had nothing to do with his fate?

Oedipus and His Hamartia: Exploring the Heated Debate

In the countless scholarly discussions on Oedipus and his hamartia, many different character traits receive the blame for Oedipus’ downfall . Yet, these same traits appear in other stories as advantages.

Some of the two-sided character traits include:

Hubris : Pride is a favorite subject of the Greek poets, but Oedipus seems to show no more pride than the average king. Some scholars argue that his prideful act was to think he could avoid the prophecy by running away, but meekly accepting that he will commit heinous acts doesn’t seem very moral.
Temper : Oedipus kills several strangers at a crossroads, including King Laius. However, Laius’ party attacked him first, so technically, his actions were in self-defense.
Determination : Oedipus insists on finding Laius’s killer. Still, he does this to save Thebes from a plague, so his motive is pure.
Simple error : The Greek word “hamartia” could be defined as “missing the target.” A person can act honorably and with the best intentions and still fall short. Oedipus had several options on what actions he might take to avoid the prophecy, but the one he chose caused him to fulfill the prophecy in its entirety.

The Essential Difference Between Greek and Shakespearean Tragic Heroes

Some arguments over Oedipus deal with whether or not Aristotle’s characteristics of a tragic hero are accurate at all. Part of the misunderstanding is that there is a difference between the tragic heroes from Greek literature and those in more modern works, most notably the works of Shakespeare. Both types of characters have the telltale hamartia, but how this fatal flaw comes into play is decidedly different .

Greek tragic heroes, while certainly flawed , do not realize that they are causing their own demise . In the case of Oedipus, he wants to avoid killing his father and marrying his mother, so he runs away to Thebes to save them. He also kills Laius in what he sees as self-defense, again, not intending to do something unethical. Similarly, marrying Jocasta was an actual act of love and was considered morally sound until the truth of Oedipus’ parentage was revealed.

Whether they think they have a choice or not, Shakespearean tragic heroes enter willingly into their deeds, knowing it may lead to an unfortunate outcome . Hamlet decides to act on the ghost’s words and avenge his father, even though his conscience bothers him often during the play. Macbeth voluntarily chooses to kill Duncan and anyone else who stands between him and the throne. Even Romeo deliberately enters his enemy’s house and woos his daughter, knowing the strife this may cause between their families.

The following are key elements of the argument and some memorable facts about the play:

Sophocles wrote the Oedipus trilogy of plays around the Fourth Century BCE.
In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus tries to run from a prophecy and ends up fulfilling it.
The name “Oedipus” means “swollen foot,” and indeed, a foot injury plays a crucial role in the plot.
Aristotle was the first philosopher to analyze drama. He used Oedipus Rex to help him define the tragic hero.
According to Aristotle, the characteristics of a tragic hero are nobility, morality, hamartia, anagnorisis, peripeteia, and catharsis.
Oedipus does possess all of Aristotle’s characteristics, though his tragic flaw is often debated.
Scholars dispute which of Oedipus’s character traits qualifies as his fatal flaw, suggesting hubris, determination, and a hot temper as possibilities.
Some researchers suggest that “hamartia” is only an error in judgment or simply an action that goes astray.
Though Oedipus is the quintessential Greek tragic hero, he is not a Shakespearean tragic hero because he doesn’t intend to do wrong.

It seems evident that Oedipus qualifies as one of the first tragic heroes in recorded fiction. However, if you disagree, feel free to share your opinion with some energetic scholars and join the debate!

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex

Analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 27, 2020 • ( 0 )

The place of the Oedipus Tyrannus in literature is something like that of the Mona Lisa in art. Everyone knows the story, the first detective story of Western literature; everyone who has read or seen it is drawn into its enigmas and moral dilemmas. It presents a kind of nightmare vision of a world suddenly turned upside down: a decent man discovers that he has unknowingly killed his father, married his mother, and sired children by her. It is a story that, as Aristotle says in the Poetics , makes one shudder with horror and feel pity just on hearing it. In Sophocles’ hands, however, this ancient tale becomes a profound meditation on the questions of guilt and responsibility, the order (or disorder) of our world, and the nature of man. The play stands with the Book of Job, Hamlet, and King Lear as one of Western literature’s most searching examinations of the problem of suffering.

—Charles Segal, Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge

No other drama has exerted a longer or stronger hold on the imagination than Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (also known as Oedipus Tyrannus or Oedipus Rex ). Tragic drama that is centered on the dilemma of a single central character largely begins with Sophocles and is exemplified by his Oedipus, arguably the most influential play ever written. The most famous of all Greek dramas, Sophocles’ play, supported by Aristotle in the Poetics, set the standard by which tragedy has been measured for nearly two-and-a-half millennia. For Aristotle, Sophocles’ play featured the ideal tragic hero in Oedipus, a man of “great repute and good fortune,” whose fall, coming from his horrifying discovery that he has killed his father and married his mother, is masterfully arranged to elicit tragedy’s proper cathartic mixture of pity and terror. The play’s relentless exploration of human nature, destiny, and suffering turns an ancient tale of a man’s shocking history into one of the core human myths. Oedipus thereby joins a select group of fictional characters, including Odysseus, Faust, Don Juan, and Don Quixote, that have entered our collective consciousness as paradigms of humanity and the human condition. As classical scholar Bernard Knox has argued, “Sophocles’ Oedipus is not only the greatest creation of a major poet and the classic representative figure of his age: he is also one of a long series of tragic protagonists who stand as symbols of human aspiration and despair before the characteristic dilemma of Western civilization—the problem of man’s true stature, his proper place in the universe.”

For nearly 2,500 years Sophocles’ play has claimed consideration as drama’s most perfect and most profound achievement. Julius Caesar wrote an adaptation; Nero allegedly acted the part of the blind Oedipus. First staged in a European theater in 1585, Oedipus has been continually performed ever since and reworked by such dramatists as Pierre Corneille, John Dryden, Voltaire, William Butler Yeats, André Gide, and Jean Cocteau. The French neoclassical tragedian Jean Racine asserted that Oedipus was the ideal tragedy, while D. H. Lawrence regarded it as “the finest drama of all time.” Sigmund Freud discovered in the play the key to understanding man’s deepest and most repressed sexual and aggressive impulses, and the so-called Oedipus complex became one of the founding myths of psychoanalysis. Oedipus has served as a crucial mirror by which each subsequent era has been able to see its own reflection and its understanding of the mystery of human existence.

If Aeschylus is most often seen as the great originator of ancient Greek tragedy and Euripides is viewed as the great outsider and iconoclast, it is Sophocles who occupies the central position as classical tragedy’s technical master and the age’s representative figure over a lifetime that coincided with the rise and fall of Athens’s greatness as a political and cultural power in the fifth century b.c. Sophocles was born in 496 near Athens in Colonus, the legendary final resting place of the exiled Oedipus. At the age of 16, Sophocles, an accomplished dancer and lyre player, was selected to lead the celebration of the victory over the Persians at the battle of Salamis, the event that ushered in Athens’s golden age. He died in 406, two years before Athens’s fall to Sparta, which ended nearly a century of Athenian supremacy and cultural achievement. Very much at the center of Athenian public life, Sophocles served as a treasurer of state and a diplomat and was twice elected as a general. A lay priest in the cult of a local deity, Sophocles also founded a literary association and was an intimate of such prominent men of letters as Ion of Chios, Herodotus, and Archelaus. Urbane, garrulous, and witty, Sophocles was remembered fondly by his contemporaries as possessing all the admired qualities of balance and tranquillity. Nicknamed “the Bee” for his “honeyed” style of fl owing eloquence—the highest compliment the Greeks could bestow on a poet or speaker—Sophocles was regarded as the tragic Homer.

In marked contrast to his secure and stable public role and private life, Sophocles’ plays orchestrate a disturbing challenge to assurance and certainty by pitting vulnerable and fallible humanity against the inexorable forces of nature and destiny. Sophocles began his career as a playwright in 468 b.c. with a first-prize victory over Aeschylus in the Great, or City, Dionysia, the annual Athenian drama competition. Over the next 60 years he produced more than 120 plays (only seven have survived intact), winning first prize at the Dionysia 24 times and never earning less than second place, making him unquestionably the most successful and popular playwright of his time. It is Sophocles who introduced the third speaking actor to classical drama, creating the more complex dramatic situations and deepened psychological penetration through interpersonal relationships and dialogue. “Sophocles turned tragedy inward upon the principal actors,” classicist Richard Lattimore has observed, “and drama becomes drama of character.” Favoring dramatic action over narration, Sophocles brought offstage action onto the stage, emphasized dialogue rather than lengthy, undramatic monologues, and purportedly introduced painted scenery. Also of note, Sophocles replaced the connected trilogies of Aeschylus with self-contained plays on different subjects at the same contest, establishing the norm that has continued in Western drama with its emphasis on the intensity and unity of dramatic action. At their core, Sophocles’ tragedies are essentially moral and religious dramas pitting the tragic hero against unalterable fate as defined by universal laws, particular circumstances, and individual temperament. By testing his characters so severely, Sophocles orchestrated adversity into revelations that continue to evoke an audience’s capacity for wonder and compassion.

The story of Oedipus was part of a Theban cycle of legends that was second only to the stories surrounding the Trojan War as a popular subject for Greek literary treatment. Thirteen different Greek dramatists, including Aeschylus and Euripides, are known to have written plays on the subject of Oedipus and his progeny. Sophocles’ great innovation was to turn Oedipus’s horrifying circumstances into a drama of self-discovery that probes the mystery of selfhood and human destiny.

The play opens with Oedipus secure and respected as the capable ruler of Thebes having solved the riddle of the Sphinx and gained the throne and Thebes’s widowed queen, Jocasta, as his reward. Plague now besets the city, and Oedipus comes to Thebes’s rescue once again when, after learning from the oracle of Apollo that the plague is a punishment for the murder of his predecessor, Laius, he swears to discover and bring the murderer to justice. The play, therefore, begins as a detective story, with the key question “Who killed Laius?” as the initial mystery. Oedipus initiates the first in a seemingly inexhaustible series of dramatic ironies as the detective who turns out to be his own quarry. Oedipus’s judgment of banishment for Laius’s murderer seals his own fate. Pledged to restore Thebes to health, Oedipus is in fact the source of its affliction. Oedipus’s success in discovering Laius’s murderer will be his own undoing, and the seemingly percipient, riddle-solving Oedipus will only see the truth about himself when he is blind. To underscore this point, the blind seer Teiresias is summoned. He is reluctant to tell what he knows, but Oedipus is adamant: “No man, no place, nothing will escape my gaze. / I will not stop until I know it all.” Finally goaded by Oedipus to reveal that Oedipus himself is “the killer you’re searching for” and the plague that afflicts Thebes, Teiresias introduces the play’s second mystery, “Who is Oedipus?”

You have eyes to see with, But you do not see yourself, you do not see The horror shadowing every step of your life, . . . Who are your father and mother? Can you tell me?

Oedipus rejects Teiresias’s horrifying answer to this question—that Oedipus has killed his own father and has become a “sower of seed where your father has sowed”—as part of a conspiracy with Jocasta’s brother Creon against his rule. In his treatment of Teiresias and his subsequent condemning of Creon to death, Oedipus exposes his pride, wrath, and rush to judgment, character flaws that alloy his evident strengths of relentless determination to learn the truth and fortitude in bearing the consequences. Jocasta comes to her brother’s defense, while arguing that not all oracles can be believed. By relating the circumstances of Laius’s death, Jocasta attempts to demonstrate that Oedipus could not be the murderer while ironically providing Oedipus with the details that help to prove the case of his culpability. In what is a marvel of ironic plot construction, each step forward in answering the questions surrounding the murder and Oedipus’s parentage takes Oedipus a step back in time toward full disclosure and self-discovery.

As Oedipus is made to shift from self-righteous authority to doubt, a messenger from Corinth arrives with news that Oedipus’s supposed father, Poly-bus, is dead. This intelligence seems again to disprove the oracle that Oedipus is fated to kill his father. Oedipus, however, still is reluctant to return home for fear that he could still marry his mother. To relieve Oedipus’s anxiety, the messenger reveals that he himself brought Oedipus as an infant to Polybus. Like Jocasta whose evidence in support of Oedipus’s innocence turns into confirmation of his guilt, the messenger provides intelligence that will connect Oedipus to both Laius and Jocasta as their son and as his father’s killer. The messenger’s intelligence produces the crucial recognition for Jocasta, who urges Oedipus to cease any further inquiry. Oedipus, however, persists, summoning the herdsman who gave the infant to the messenger and was coincidentally the sole survivor of the attack on Laius. The herdsman’s eventual confirmation of both the facts of Oedipus’s birth and Laius’s murder produces the play’s staggering climax. Aristotle would cite Sophocles’ simultaneous con-junction of Oedipus’s recognition of his identity and guilt with his reversal of fortune—condemned by his own words to banishment and exile as Laius’s murderer—as the ideal artful arrangement of a drama’s plot to produce the desired cathartic pity and terror.

The play concludes with an emphasis on what Oedipus will now do after he knows the truth. No tragic hero has fallen further or faster than in the real time of Sophocles’ drama in which the time elapsed in the play coincides with the performance time. Oedipus is stripped of every illusion of his authority, control, righteousness, and past wisdom and is forced to contend with a shame that is impossible to expiate—patricide and incestual relations with his mother—in a world lacking either justice or alleviation from suffering. Oedipus’s heroic grandeur, however, grows in his diminishment. Fundamentally a victim of circumstances, innocent of intentional sin whose fate was preordained before his birth, Oedipus refuses the consolation of blamelessness that victimization confers, accepting in full his guilt and self-imposed sentence as an outcast, criminal, and sinner. He blinds himself to confirm the moral shame that his actions, unwittingly or not, have provoked. It is Oedipus’s capacity to endure the revelation of his sin, his nature, and his fate that dominates the play’s conclusion. Oedipus’s greatest strengths—his determination to know the truth and to accept what he learns—sets him apart as one of the most pitiable and admired of tragic heroes. “The closing note of the tragedy,” Knox argues, “is a renewed insistence on the heroic nature of Oedipus; the play ends as it began, with the greatness of the hero. But it is a different kind of greatness. It is now based on knowledge, not, as before on ignorance.” The now-blinded Oedipus has been forced to see and experience the impermanence of good fortune, the reality of unimaginable moral shame, and a cosmic order that is either perverse in its calculated cruelty or chaotically random in its designs, in either case defeating any human need for justice and mercy.

The Chorus summarizes the harsh lesson of heroic defeat that the play so majestically dramatizes:

Look and learn all citizens of Thebes. This is Oedipus. He, who read the famous riddle, and we hailed chief of men, All envied his power, glory, and good fortune. Now upon his head the sea of disaster crashes down. Mortality is man’s burden. Keep your eyes fixed on your last day. Call no man happy until he reaches it, and finds rest from suffering.

Few plays have dealt so unflinchingly with existential truths or have as bravely defined human heroism in the capacity to see, suffer, and endure.

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A Summary and Analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The plot of Sophocles’ great tragedy Oedipus the King (sometimes known as Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannos ) has long been admired. In his Poetics , Aristotle held it up as the exemplary Greek tragedy . Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it one of the three perfect plots in all of literature (the other two being Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones ).

Oedipus the King might also be called the first detective story in Western literature. Yet how well do we know Sophocles’ play? And what does a closer analysis of its plot features and themes reveal?

The city of Thebes is in the grip of a terrible plague. The city’s king, Oedipus, sends Creon to consult the Delphic oracle, who announces that if the city rids itself of a murderer, the plague will disappear. The murderer in question is the unknown killer of the city’s previous king, Laius. Oedipus adopts a sort of detective role, and endeavours to sniff out the murderer.

He himself is plagued by another prophecy: that he would one day kill his father and marry his mother. He thinks he’s managed to thwart the prophecy by leaving home – and his parents – back in Corinth. On his way from Corinth to Thebes, he had an altercation with a man on the road: neither party would back down to let the other past, and Oedipus ended up killing the man in perhaps Western literature’s first instance of road rage.

Then Oedipus learns that his ‘father’ back in Corinth was not his biological parent: he was adopted after his ‘real’ parents left him for dead on a hillside, and he was rescued by a kindly shepherd who rescued him, took the child in, and raised him as his own. (The name Oedipus is Greek for ‘swollen foot’, from the chains put through the infant’s feet when it was left on the mountain.)

Tiresias the seer then reveals that the man Oedipus killed on the road was Laius – the former king of Thebes and (shock horror! Twist!) Oedipus’ biological father. Laius’ widow, Jocasta, is Oedipus’ own mother – and the woman Oedipus had married upon his arrival in Thebes.

When this terrible truth is revealed, Jocasta hangs herself, and Oedipus puts out his own eyes and leaves Thebes, going into self-imposed exile so he can free the Thebans from the plague.

This much constitutes a brief recap or summary of the plot of Oedipus the King . How we should interpret and analyse its use of prophecy and Oedipus’ own culpability, however, remains a less clear-cut matter. Is Oedipus to blame for what happens to him? Or is he simply a pawn of the gods and fates, to be used according to their whim?

Eventually, the nemesis can take no more and raises an army against Winter Kay. One of his soldiers, bearing a golden badge that resembles an eye in shape, is the one who kills Winter Kay in battle. In his dying moments, the hapless villain realises that, in seeking to avert the prophecy, he had, in fact, helped it to come true.

This is similar to the story of Oedipus the King . Oedipus heard the prophecy that he would one day murder his father and marry his mother, and so fled from his presumed parents so as to avoid fulfilling the prophecy. Such an act seems noble and it was jolly bad luck that fate had decreed that Oedipus would turn out to be a foundling and his real parents were still out there for him to bump into.

But what is clever about Sophocles’ dramatising of the myth is the way he introduces little details which reveal Oedipus’ character. The clues were already there that Oedipus was actually adopted: when he received the prophecy from the oracle, a drunk told him as much. But because the man was drunk, Oedipus didn’t believe him.

But, as the Latin phrase has it, in vino veritas . Then, it is Oedipus’ hubris, his pride, that contributes to the altercation on the road between him and Laius, the man who turns out to be his real father: if Oedipus was less stubborn, he would have played the bigger man and stepped aside to let Laius pass.

What does all this mean, when we stop and analyse it in terms of the interplay between fate and personal actions in Oedipus the King ? It means that Sophocles was aware of something which governs all our lives. Call it ‘karma’ if you will, or fate, but it works even if we remove the supernatural framework into which the action of Oedipus the King is placed.

Our actions have consequences, but that doesn’t mean that a particular action will lead to a particular consequence: it means that one action might cause something quite different to happen, which will nevertheless be linked in some way to our lives. A thief steals your wallet and you never see him, or your wallet, again. Did the criminal get away with it? Maybe.

Or maybe his habit of taking an intrusive interest in other people’s wallets will lead him, somewhere down the line, to getting what the ancient Greeks didn’t call ‘his comeuppance’. He wasn’t punished for pilfering your possessions, but he will nevertheless receive his just deserts.

Oedipus kills Laius because he is a stubborn and angry man; in his anger and pride, he allows himself to forget the prophecy (or to believe himself safe if he kills this man who definitely isn’t his father, no way ), and to kill another man. That one event will set in motion a chain of events that will see him married to his mother, the city over which he rules in the grip of plague, and – ultimately – Oedipus blinded and his wife/mother hanged.

Or perhaps that’s to impose a modern reading onto a classical text which Sophocles himself would not recognise. Yet works of art are always opening themselves up to new readings which see them reflecting our changing and evolving moral beliefs, and that is perhaps why Oedipus the King remains a great play to read, watch, analyse, and discuss. There remains something unsettling about its plot structure and its ambiguous meaning, and that is what lends it its power.

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7 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King”

Reblogged this on Writing hints and competitions and commented: Insight, the fate that launched a thousand clips

Wonderful analysis. Thank you. ~~dru~~

Thank you :)

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Oedipus Character Analysis: The Complex Personality of a Tragic Hero

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Published: Jun 14, 2024

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The inner turmoil of a tragic hero, the consequences of hubris and ignorance, moral lessons from oedipus's tragic journey, conclusion: the tragedy of oedipus's personality, bibliography.

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In conclusion, the theme of blindness in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is a rich and multifaceted aspect of the narrative that serves both narrative and symbolic functions. By examining the paradox of Oedipus' blindness, the role of [...]

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Oedipus: A Tragic Hero

Oedipus Rex, or Oedipus the King is Sophocless first play of The Theban Cycle. It tells the story of a king that tries to escape his fate, but by doing so he only brings about his downfall. Oedipus is a classic example of the Aristotelian definition of a tragic hero. Aristotle defines a tragic hero as a basically good and noble person who causes his own downfall due to a flaw in his character. Oedipus is a man of noble blood; his parents, who raised him as a child, were King Polybus and Queen Merope of Corinth.

Oedipus also becomes a king himself when he solves the Sphinxs riddle, thus saving Thebes and taking over the throne of the late King Laius. Oedipus then marries Jocasta, Laiuss widow, and they have children together. Though he is a very fair and understanding husband, Oedipuss main concern is always the city of Thebes. When a plague strikes the city, Oedipus refused sleep until he finds the cause, and he, sent Creon,To Delphi, Apollos place of revelation, To learn there, if he can, What act or pledge of mine may save the city (Sophocles 1257).

Oedipus then vows to find who killed King Laius after Creon reveals that Laiuss death must be avenged so that the plague will be dispersed. Oedipus, a great and noble king was flawed by his hubris, or spiritual pride. Oedipus believes that he could avoid what the oracle told him long ago: he would kill his father and then marry his mother. Instead of returning to his home of Corinth, Oedipus wandered the lands until he came upon Thebes. The city was in turmoil after the sudden death of King Laius, and the Sphinx was killing dozens of citizens each day, and would only stop if her riddle was solved.

Oedipus was clever enough to solve the riddle, and then took on the throne of Thebes. When he began ruling Thebes, Oedipus thought that he had beaten his fate; he thought that his father would live and that he would not marry his mother. Instead, it is revealed to Oedipus that he is really the son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta. When Oedipus was a baby, Laius went to the oracle and his future was revealed to him; his son who would later marry his mother would kill Laius. Perturbed by this, Laius ordered the death of his son, so a shepherd took the baby to a mountain to dispose of the baby, but he couldnt do it.

Instead he gave the baby to a messenger of King Polybus. Oedipus, while trying to avoid his future kills King Laius in self-defense, and then takes on the throne of Thebes. Inadvertently, Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother. Oedipus causes his own downfall through his arrogance. He thinks that Teiresias is falsely accusing him of murdering Laius when Teiresias says, you are the murderer whom you seek (Sophocles 1264). Teiresias then tells Oedipus that the man who he seeks will be brother and father to his children and husband and son to his wife. Oedipuss hubris is also a major cause of his downfall.

Because he tries to escape what fate has in store for him, he ends up falling right into what was planned for him. He finds out that he is the son of Laius and Jocasta, and he is the highwayman that killed Laius. Oedipus, doing what he feels is right for Thebes, blinds himself with Jocastas brooch after he discovers her body swaying from a cord. Oedipus then sends himself into self-exile, doomed to walk the lands blindly until he finds, Life, at his death, a memory without pain (Sophocles 1294). Oedipus, the classic tragic hero, was a good and noble king who brought about his downfall by trying to avoid his fate.

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The Tragic Hero In Oedipus The King

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