Oedipus The King: A True Tragic Hero

“Little or nothing is known for certain of the origin of Greek tragedy. The most common hypothesis holds that it developed from improvised speeches during choral dances honoring Dionysus, a Greek nature god associated with spring” (1098). Aristotle’s “Poetics” defined what a tragedy and what makes a tragic hero. This provides a base to evaluate Sophocles play, “Oedipus the King.” This piece is the ultimate tragedy that displays Oedipus as a true, tragic hero.

Aristotle exclaims, “Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these- thought and character- are the two

The first is that they are to be noble/wisdom by birth. Oedipus was thought to be the son of King Polybus (1113). However, we are later advised he was the direct decedent of King Laius. He discovers this when it became apparent his wife, Jocasta, was in fact his mother. Oedipus cries out, “I stand revealed at last—cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands” (1132)! Prior to the discovery, Oedipus, continually balked at what the blind profit declared. There were signs, and yet, he felt he was full of wisdom and knowledge. This meets Aristotle’s first

This is their flaw in judgement. “Aristotle seems to imply that the hero is undone because of some mistake he or she commits, but this mistake need not be the result of a moral fault; it may be simply a miscalculation” (1095). Oedipus’ tragic flaw is his intelligence. He continually fails to see the truth. This is ironic in that he has physical sight, but is flawed by being blinded by his inner sight to the truth around him. The truth that Apollo’s prophecy came through. He killed his biological father, and he married and fathered children with his mother. Ironically, while running from Apollo’s prophecy, he ran directly into