tragoed Oedipus the King (Oedipus Rex) as Ideal Tragic Hero Essay

Oedipus Rex as the Ideal Tragic scrapper If we give ourselves up to a full sympathy with the hero, there is no question that the Oedipus Rex fulfills the function of a tragedy, and arouses fear and pity in the highest degree. save the modern reader, coming to the classic drama not entirely for the break up of enjoyment, will not always surrender himself to the emotional effect. He is knowing to worry somewhat Greek fatalism and the justice of the downfall of Oedipus, and, finding no satisfactory solution for these intellectual difficulties, loses half the pleasure that the drama was mean to produce. Perhaps we trouble ourselves too much concerning the Greek notions of fate in human lifespan. We are inclined to regard them with a lively archaist interest, as if they were something remote and peculiar yet in reality the infixed difference between these notions and the more familiar ideas of a later metre is so slight that it need not concern the naive and benignant reader. A fter all, the fundamental aim of the poet is not to teach us about these matters. but to construct a tragedy which shall completely fulfill its proper(ip) function. Nevertheless, for the student of literature who feels bound to solve the twofold problem, How is the tragedy of Oedipus to be reconciled with a rational conception of life? and How does Oedipus himself comply with the peripatetic requirements for a tragic hero? there is a simple consequence in the ethical teaching of the great philosopher in whose eyes the Oedipus Rex appears to pick out been well-nigh a perfect tragedy. In other words, let us compare the ideal of the Ethics with the ideal of the Poetics. Aristotle finds the end of human elbow grease to be happiness, that is, an unhampered activity of the soul i... ... in accordance with reason. In the Oedipus Rex Sophocles had already shown the reverse. The man who sees but one side of a matter, and straightway, dictated on by his uncontrolled emotions, acts in a ccordance with that imperfect vision, meets a fate most pitiful and terrible, in accordance with the great laws which the gods prolong made. This philosophy of Aristotle and Sophocles is clearly expressed in the drama itself. May part still find me, sings the Chorus, winning the praise of reverent purity in all words and deeds sanctioned by those laws of range sublime, called into life throughout the high, clear heaven, whose father is Olympus alone their parent was no range of mortal men, no, nor shall oblivion ever lay them to sleep the god is force in them and grows not old. Works CitedSophocles. Oedipus Rex. New York Dover Publications, Inc., 1991.