Who Is Oedipus A Tragic Hero

As human beings, none of us are perfect, we each have our own flaws, those of which sometimes can bring about great misfortune. In literature when this occurs to the protagonist it is referred to as, “hamartia” or tragic flaw. According to Aristotle, tragedy involves a protagonist of a high socioeconomic class who falls from prosperity to misery through several reversals and discoveries as a result of such “hamartia". This protagonist is known as the tragic hero. Tragedy depicts the downfall of a noble hero, usually through some combination of hubris, fate, and the will of the gods(Poetics). The character should be a good man though not perfect so that the audience can identify with him. As there, will no feelings of pity or fear in the audience …show more content…
However, his character is not an exceptional one since it suffers from several flaws. While familiarizing with his character the audience comes across three character traits that can be seen as bad qualities: his hubris or excessive pride, his temperament, and his superior determination to always have his way. Oedipus’s short temperament is shown when he begs Tiresias, the blind prophet, to reveal who Laius’s murderer is, to which he answers that he knows the truth but wishes he did not. At first Oedipus is confused, then angry, he insists that Tiresias tells the people of the city what he knows. Once Tiresias tells him that it is he who is blind to the truth he counterattacks him by insulting him and jumping to the conclusion that Teiresias and Creon have made a conspiracy against him. This situation challenged his inner ego, therefore, making him react by saying the others were plotting against him rather than considering that they might be right. Once again, we see his pride, when he killed his biological father Laius in a crossroad during his travels to Thebes because of some type of road rage. Unknowingly, Oedipus manages to fulfill half of the prophecy he was trying to so hard to avoid, leading him closer to his