Oedipus The Tragic Hero
...on what he considered to be the perfect tragedy, Sophocles' Oedipus the King. According to Aristotle, a tragedy must be an imitation of life in the form of a serious story that is complete in itself; in other words, the story must be realistic and narrow in focus. A good tragedy will evoke pity and fear in its viewers.
Aristotle also outlined the characteristics of a good tragic hero. He must be "better than we are," a man who is superior to the average man in some way. In Oedipus's case, he is superior not only because of social standing, but also because he is smart he is the only person who could solve the Sphinx's riddle. At the same time, a tragic hero must evoke both pity and fear, and Aristotle claims that the best way to do this is if he is imperfect. A character with a mixture of good and evil is more compelling than a character that is merely good. And Oedipus is definitely not perfect; although a clever man, he is blind to the truth that he married his mother and killed his father and refuses to believe Tiresias. Although he is a good father, he unknowingly fathered children in incest. A tragic hero suffers because of his hubris, a Greek word that is often translated as "tragic flaw" but really means "error in judgement." Oedipus' tragic flaw is the fact that he is overly proud of himself.
In Oedipus the King, fate is an idea that surfaces again and again. Whether or not Oedipus has a "tragic flaw" is a matter that will be discussed later. The focus on fate reveals another aspect of a tragedy as outlined by Aristotle: dramatic irony. Good tragedies are filled with irony. The audience knows the outcome of the story already, but the hero does not, making his actions seem ignorant or inappropriate in the face of what is to come. Whenever a character attempts to change fate, this is ironic to an audience who knows that...
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