As described by Aristotle, it is essential that a genuine and effective tragedy tells the story of a person of noble stature falling from his or her greatness, increasing awareness or some gain of self-knowledge. Sophocles, a master playwright of his time, supremely accomplished this task with his play Oedipus Rex. Oedipus Rex can be described as an unsurpassed masterpiece of success gone to ruin; a profound statement of the human condition, and the ultimate sacrifice for self-knowledge.
             Perhaps the greatest tragedy of success gone to ruin is Sophocles's, Oedipus Rex. It's the tale of the rise and fall of the noble Oedipus, the baby who was prophesized to kill his father and beget children to his mother. The play starts with Oedipus as the King of Thebes, and his Queen being Jocasta. He does not know that the man he had killed years before was the former King of Thebes and his father, Laius. He also is blind to the fact that his wife, Jocasta, is also his mother. The people of Thebes see Oedipus as God-like because he saved them from the Sphinx and has promised to rid the plague that is killing people in Thebes. After he is accused by Teiresias of being the killer of Laius and the cause of the plague in Thebes, Oedipus blames him and his brother-in-law uncle Kreon of conspiring to overthrow Oedipus and take the crown. After discovering more and more about the truth of his childhood, Oedipus gets more suspicious than ever and calls in a shepherd and a messenger to find the real truth. After he finds that he did kill his father, Laius, and has begotten children to his mother-wife, Jocasta, he finds Jocasta dead. She had hung herself because she could not bear to live with this discovery. Oedipus then uses her brooches to gauge his own eyes out, and exiles himself from Thebes, leaving Kreon to rule. This play is the greatest tale of fall from success to ruin ever because as Oedipus is at the highest point of his life, ruler of
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