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Role of oedipus as a tragic hero
Role of oedipus as a tragic hero
Character analysis of oedipus from oedipus rex
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Oedipus Rex as a Tragic Hero Before the twentieth century plays were mainly written as either a tragedy or comedy. In a tragic play the tragic hero will often do something that will eventually destroy him. In the book Oedipus the King, Oedipus is the tragic hero. In this tragic play the main character, which is portrayed as Oedipus, will do a good deed that will in turn make him a hero. This hero will reach his height of pride in the story, and in the end the action, which he had committed earlier, will return and destroy this man who was once called a hero. This soon-to-be king solved the riddle of the Sphinx, which had been killing the young men of Thebes as they tried to leave. The people of Thebes respected Oedipus, for he had saved the city from the Sphinx, by answering this riddle. For the removal of this monster he was praised by the city of Thebes and married the newly widowed Queen, Jocasta. Jocastas husband had been murdered by a "group of robbers" (who was actually Oedipus). Once again Oedipus becomes a hero when he promises to save the city of Thebes from plague. Oedipus sends Creon, to ask Apollo how to save the city. Creon returns from Delphi and told Oedipus "banishment-or repaying blood with blood"(Page 7). Oedipus asks, "Who is the man whose death Apollo lays to our charges?"(Page 7). The king, wanting restore his city to what it once was, seeks to find the killer Laius. Oedipus discovers that the child of king Laius, and queen Jocasta was sent away to die as a child. As he seeks for the reason for this child being sent away he stumbles upon the fact that the child was prophesized to kill his father and he would lay with his mother. From this he became suspicious that the child may be him. He realized that while he had been considered a hero at the same time he had been doing what the oracle told him he would do. Jocasta and Lauis, then Oedipus didn't want the oracle's prophecies to come true and they tried everything that they could to go against it, however by trying to avoid this they ran right into the prophecy. He had killed his father and married his mother without knowing it. His mother, Jocasta had been for fulfilling the prophesy.
In Oedipus the King, Oedipus is told that he will marry his mother and murder his father. He is told by the Delphic oracle this information but he wants to change his fate so he banishes himself from what he believes is place of birth. As he is wondering, he stumbles across a caravan. After some arguing, due to his hubris, he kills all the men in the caravan. One of the men in the caravan turned out to be his father, King Laios. Oedipus at the time did not know this. He then entered the city of Thebes and broke the plague of the sphinx by solving its riddle. Because of this he was awarded the recently widowed Queen Iocaste, who is actually his mother. He married Iocaste and had children with her.
Oedipus goes through denial and then separates himself through self-examination. Although warned to refrain from the search by his wife/mother, Jocasta, Oedipus continues to seek out the truth. This truth seeking leads to the transformation where Oedipus realizes that he is responsible. He had killed his father (although at the time he did not know Laius was his father) and married his mother (he did not know this either), thereby causing the plague. This realization was too much for Jocasta to bear, and so she committed suicide.
Throughout the play, there are many examples that support the argument that Oedipus is a tragic hero. By definition, a tragic hero is “a great or virtuous character in a dramatic tragedy who is destined for downfall, suffering, or defeat”. Oedipus is a concerned and loving king whose people trust him explicitly. However, throughout the play, he makes choices that put him in bad situations. The play tells the story of Oedipus' journey to try and uncover the mystery of Laius' murder, as told by the oracle. Throughout his journey, he commits horrible crimes, and destroys both himself and his life. Oedipus also drags innocent people down with him. Oedipus is a tragic hero because of his fatal flaws, he was born of noble birth, he showed excessive pride and he became more self aware.
In part one of Antigone, Oedipus, who was a shepherd's adopted son, solved a riddle from a sphinx, was rewarded by becoming king over Thebes, and then became wed to the previous queen. This happened without the knowledge of the queen, Jocasta, being his widowed mother. Through his reign they bore four children, two boys and two girls. Of these children were Eteocles, Polyneices, Ismene, and Antigone.
Oedipus was a great man. He saved Thebes from the Sphinx. The Sphinx was a terrible creature who stood outside the gates of Thebes asking anyone who come to go through gates a riddle. If the riddle is unanswered or answered wrongly, the Sphinx would kill them. Oedipus saved the city of Thebes by solving the Sphinx riddle, which led to the Sphinx killing itself. Oedipus was a great hero to the city of Thebes. He was their great savior so they gave him their queen and kingdom. Oedipus downfall was very tragic and shocked a lot of people that such a great hero could fall so low.
Tragic heroes cause intense empathetic reaction, developing an inevitable story of anguish and triumph. In Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Oedipus is such a hero. He has many good, even heroic qualities; however, his deep flaws ultimately cause his undoing and terrible punishment. Although he comes across as a royal being who is basically good, he has flaws that ultimately cannot be controlled and devastate his life. As the readers watch his development and the development of the interwoven themes in the play, we ourselves suffer upon seeing and hearing the ironies of his relationships and motivations. Tragic heroes are relatable and saddening, and the pure idea of their being can draw deep emotion that lasts through civilizations and generations. Oedipus Rex is an iconic example of a tragic story with a tragic main character.
Laius and Jocasta were told that their son would kill Laius and sleep with Jocasta. They decided to avoid this by piercing the child’s feet and leaving him on the side of a hill to die. The child was found by a shepherd who gave it to another man who later presented the child as a gift for the king and queen of Corinth and was named Oedipus. When he grew into a young man, Oedipus was told by an oracle that he would kill his father and sleep with his mother, so he left his home to avoid ever hurting his parents. At a crossroads, he was confronted with a group of men, and killed all but one in conflict. He was unaware, that Laius was king of Thebes and his biological father. Oedipus defeated the Sphinx, a creature that had terrorized Thebes, and took the throne of the city as well the hand of the queen Jocasta as rewards for his victory, thus unknowingly fulfilling the prophecy he was told when he was younger. Years later, when the city of Thebes was suffering greatly under a curse, Oedipus was desperate to end it. He was told that the murderer of Laius the previous king of Thebes was still in the city, and to rid Thebes of the plague, the killer had to be exiled. Oedipus was told that he was in fact the murderer of Laius, he was ignorant, angry and dismissive at the idea.
After Oedipus becomes king of Thebes, the people of Thebes become plagued. Oedipus’ feels responsible for saving the people of Thebes. Oedipus’ pride to save the city later turns to pity after he divulges the sin he has committed. His pride forces him to find the traitor who murdered Laius. He eventually finds out that he is the sinner and gouges his eyes out to prove that he is not worthy of sight.
Oedipus’ personality clearly reflects pride and determination throughout the play. When Oedipus heard the oracles’ prediction that he was to kill his father and marry his mother, he was determined to prevent the prophecy. Therefore he left his homeland of Corinth never to return. Then when he solved the Sphinx’s riddle, Oedipus’ pride rose to a new level. He was praised by the people of Thebes, resulting in his marriage to Jocasta, Queen of Thebes. Oedipus also shows his determination when in search of Laius’ murderer. He stated that he would avenge the King’s death as if Laius were his own father. He cursed the murderer, announcing “May he drag out an evil death-in-life in misery.” These characteristics of pride and determination, which Oedipus emanates throughout the play, may appear to be positive attributes to one’s personality. However, Oedipus’ actions, based on these characteristics, are what led him to his eventual downfall and suffrage.
While still traveling, Oedipus had come to the city of Thebes. There, he saved the city from the wrath of the Sphinx by solving her riddle. Seen as a savior by the citizens of Thebes, Oedipus was made king and subsequently, the husband of Jocasta. Oedipus and his wife-mother ruled together and had four children while never knowing of the true relationship between each other.
To destroy Oedipus, the gods granted the power of prophecy to oracles that delivered these prophecies to Laius and Jocasta. As a result, they kill their child to get rid of him and his terrible prophecies. Unfortunately, these prophecies came true because Oedipus didn’t know his real parents. If he had known his real parents, he wouldn’t have killed his father and married his mother.
Aristotle, in his work The Poetics, tries to delineate the idea of a tragedy. Throughout his work Aristotle says that the hero, or at least the protagonist in a tragedy must be substantially good, almost godlike. This hero must bring upon themselves their downfall, due to their fatal flaw. If the hero is not at a high point, an audience will not care about them, and won’t notice their fall. One must fall a long way in social class in order for it to be noticed by the outside man. Oedipus perfectly exemplifies a tragedy, in relation to modern society, effectively showing how too much pride can often lead to downfall or doom.
Oedipus was a victime of fate, his futur was foretold by an Oracle, he had no way of knowing that his wife was his mother nor that the stranger he killed was his father. Oedipus could not prevent his own downfall. Oedipus was the king of Thebes, he became king when he cured the city of a deadly plague. He cured the plague by solving the riddle of the mythical creature, the Sphinkx. Now the city is suffering from another plague and as king Oedipus must solve the riddle of this one.
However, these people had the power to make choices, and they let their flaws rule their lives, driving them to their terrible fates. In reality, there are no oracles to seers that can tell the future. People do not know what will happen, but every choice is still different. For Oedipus, he made the choice to run from Corinth, which led him to his fate. Had he stayed in Corinth, he might not have killed Laius and married Jocasta. For Cassandra, she made the choice to enter the house where she would be killed. Had see decided to flee, she might have lived. Her life would be hard as a foreign woman in ancient Greece, but she still had the choice. Prophecies do not determine the future. The actions that people take, make the prophecies come true, and it is impossible to know which actions will lead to which prophecy, but the choices are still
Oedipus the King by Sophocles has the ingredients necessary for a good Aristotelian tragedy. The play has the essential parts that form the plot, consisting of the peripeteia, anagnorisis and a catastrophe; which are all necessary for a good tragedy according to the Aristotelian notion. Oedipus is the perfect tragic protagonist, for his happiness changes to misery due to hamartia (an error). Oedipus also evokes both pity and fear in its audience, causing the audience to experience catharsis or a purging of emotion, which is the true test for any tragedy according to Aristotle.