Oedipus Rex Essay

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Oedipus Rex by Sophocles 1 - Oedipus is abandoned after his father, King Laius, hears a prophecy that he is to kill his father and marry his mother, Queen Jocasta. Oedipus is adopted and later hears the same prophecy, and goes in search of the truth. Along the way he gets in a fight with a man and kills him, not knowing it is his father. He then solves a riddle from the Sphinx which has been terrorizing a kingdom. In return, the kingdom gives him their queen's hand in marriage, who is his biological mother.

2 - In his Poetics, Aristotle outlined the things necessary for a good tragedy. Based on his formula, he considered Sophocles's Oedipus the King to be the perfect tragedy. According to Aristotle, a tragedy must be an imitation of life in the form of a serious story and the story must be realistic and narrow in focus. Aristotle also outlined the characteristics of an ideal tragic hero. He must be better than we are, a man who is superior to the average man in some way. In Oedipus's case, he was superior not only because of social standing, but also because he was smart. He was the only person who could solve the Sphinx's riddle. Oedipus' mistake of killing his father at the crossroads was made unknowingly. For him, there was no way of escaping his fate.

3 - Dramatic Irony is the irony occurring when the implications of a situation and speech are understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play. There are many examples of dramatic irony in the

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