Oedipus the Tragedy

Oedipus the Tragedy Imagine the pain of discovering that you had unknowingly murdered your father and then married your widowed mother! This was the discovery made by the main character in Sophocles’ Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, when he sets out to seek his true identity. The philosopher Aristotle explains in his book The Poetics, that a tragic play arouses the emotions of pity, fear, wonder and awe in the audience. The plot must be complex, …

…revealing a truth to awful to bear. He does everything within his power to escape his fate, and he thinks that he does not need the gods. Oedipus should have known better than anyone, that man cannot control his own destiny. Oedipus Rex contains ideas with which all later definitions of tragedy comes to terms. Its complex plot, its tragic hero and Oedipus’s tortured suffering, meet and exceed the parameters of classical Greek tragedy.