Born from myth, Sophocles' Oedipus
figures as the tragic hero who kills his father and marries his mother. A
victim of fate vilified by all, he discovers his own corruption and tears out
his eyes in self-punishment — a symbolic castration for his incestuous sin.Using
Oedipus as an ideal model, Aristotle says that a tragic hero must be an
important or influential man who commits an error in judgment, and who must
then suffer the consequences of his actions.The tragic hero must learn a lesson
from his errors and become an example of the condition of a great man’s
collapse.
The petition of the chorus that opens Oedipus
the King attests to Oedipus' responsible leadership. He has been a good
king for Thebes, and in crisis he moves decisively to save his city, but in his
excitement and energy, Oedipus lacks discretion. In his attempts to discover
the truth about the murder of Laius, he falsely accuses Creon and Tiresias
of treachery, and even forces the reluctant shepherd to tell his story, which
publicly reveals Oedipus to be the murderer and husband of his own mother. The
same leadership skills that have brought him fame and success—decisive action,
a desire to solve mysteries using his intellect—drive him to his own
destruction.
Oedipus is that ill-fated tragic character whose
parents had to throw him away on the third day of his birth, because it was the
prophecy of oracle of Delphi that he would kill his father and marry his
mother. He is that tragic man who was unfortunately pitied by the shepherd who
was supposed to throw him in the mountains of Kithairon. And instead of "dying
that fortunate little death", he was given to another king Polybos.
And since he was destined to kill his father, he grew up in Corinth and ran
away from there, on hearing the rumors of his evil fate, precisely to come to
Thebes, kill his real father, by solving the riddle of the Sphinx becomes king
of Thebes and marry his mother, without knowing that he was running into the doom
he thought he was escaping from. Eventually, he comes to know that he married
his own mother and he tears out his eyes in self-punishment: “Blind from
this hour on! Blind in the darkness-blind!”. At the end he says “My
destiny, my dark power, what a leap you made!”
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