Oedipus The tragic hero
In the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Oedipus is a classic tragic hero. According to Aristotle's definition, Oedipus is a tragic hero because he is a king whose life falls apart when he finds out his life story. There are a number of characteristics described by Aristotle that identify a tragic hero. For example, a tragic hero must cause his own downfall; his fate is not deserved, and his punishment exceeds the crime; he also must be of noble stature and have greatness. Oedipus is in love with his idealized self, but neither the grandiose nor the depressive "Narcissus" can really love himself (Miller 67). All of the above characteristics make Oedipus a tragic hero according to Aristotle's ideas about tragedy, and a narcissist. Using Oedipus as an ideal model, Aristotle says that a tragic hero must be an important or influential man who makes an error in judgment, and who must then suffer the consequences of his actions. Those actions are seen when Oedipus forces Teiresias to reveal his destiny and his father's name. When Teiresias tries to warn him by saying " I say that you and your most dearly loved are wrapped together in a hideous sin, blind to the horror of it" (Sophocles 428). Oedipus still does not care and proceeds w
ith his questioning as if he did not understand what Teiresias was talking about. If he hadn't been so judgmental or narcissistic, as Miller would characterize a personality like Oedipus, he would never have killed King Laius and called Teiresias a liar. His birth parents seek the advice of the Delphi Oracle, who recommends that they should not have any children. His nobility deceived him as well as his reflection, since it shows only his perfect, wonderful face and not his inner world, his pain, his history (Miller 66). Later, after his self- inflicted blinding, Oedipus sees his actions as wrongdoing when he says "What use are my eyes to me, who could never - See anything pleasant again?" (Sophocles 1293) and that blindness does not necessarily have to be physical as we can se when he says, "If I had sight, I know not with what eyes I would have looked" (Sophocles 1325). Light, I shall not look on you Again. According to Miller, a person who is great, who is admired everywhere, and needs this admiration to survive, has one of the extreme forms of narcissism, which is grandiosity. But when it is prophesized to Oedipus, he sets forth from the city of his foster parents in order to prevent this terrible fate from occurring. The tragic hero must learn a lesson from his errors in judgment and become an example to the audience of what happens when great men fall from their lofty social or political positions. His destiny is to be of noble stature from birth, which is denied to him by his parents, but given back by the Sphinx. If one of these happens to fail, then the catastrophe of a severe depression is near (Miller 34). I have been born where I should not be born, I have been married where I should not marry, I have killed whom I should not kill; now all is clear" (Sophocles 1144). The birth of Oedipus presets his destiny to result in tragedy even though he is of noble birth. Oedipus's destiny is not deserved because he is being punished for his parent's actions.
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