virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice or

depravity, but by some error in judgment… the change in the hero’s fortune must not be

from misery to happiness, but on the contrary, from happiness to misery’. From this

definition, he further expanded it by defining the profile of the Classical Greek tragic

hero, basing it on what he considered the best tragedy ever written, Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex.

According to Aristotle, a tragedy should comprise of the hero’s goodness and superiority, a

tragic flaw in which the hero makes fatal errors in judgment which eventually lead to his

downfall, a tragic realization in which the main character understands how he has

unwittingly helped to bring about his own destruction and the absence of freewill in the

Oedipus was a good ruler: just, compassionate and sympathetic. When the priests

of Thebes approached him, pleading for help on behalf of the people of Thebes who were

suffering from death and famine, Oedipus immediately agreed and promised them that he

would do his best in solving the probl

birth, Oedipus seemed to have a pre-determined set of events that would lead to his own

the killer of the former King Lauis in order to save his people from suffering, he invited

how Oedipus' choices in life did not make a difference in his future. His running from

change it. His free will and choice to avoid fate actually brought him closer. He did the

will evoke pity and fear in its viewers, causing the viewers to experience a feeling of

ems, saying that his heart bore ‘the weight of his

Some topics in this essay:
Queen Corinth, King Lauis, According Aristotle, King Thebes, Greeks Oedipus, Oedipus Lauis’, Teiresias Iocasta, Oedipus Rex, Poetics Aristotle, Catharsis Greek, king thebes, king lauis, crowned king, sphinx’s riddle, crowned king thebes, solved sphinx’s, apollo’s oracle, king queen, hero’s fortune, pursuit truth, becoming king thebes, killing king lauis, solved sphinx’s riddle, oedipus rex,