The character Oedipus fits Aristotle 's criterion of character as a leader and a person because he remains consistent in trying to remove the curse from Thebes. In the introduction, Oedipus is addressing the priest about the condition of his city. "You are sick to death, but no one is as sick as I. / Your pain strikes each of you alone, each / in the confess of himself, no other. . . . my spirit / grieves for this city, for myself and all of you" (205). This shows a quality of a consistency because as a leader, he cares so much for his people as much to say that he suffers when when his people are suffering. He remains like this throughout the play. The second example is from the end of the play, when Oedipus is addressing the leader after Jocasta has just run off the stage. "Let it burst! …show more content…
The character Oedipus is a tragic hero because of his tragic flaw of having consistent, proper ambition to finding the murderer of Laius. In the second scene, Oedipus enters and addresses the chorus, as if addressing the entire city of Thebes. "To all of Thebes I make this proclamation: / if any one of you knows who murdered Laius, I order him to reveal / the whole truth to me . . . He will suffer no unbearable punishment, nothing worse than exile" (171) At this time, Oedipus is trying to convince the killer to come forward and confess the murder. Ironically, by announcing this he has cursed himself because he is, in fact, the murderer of Laius. Near the end of the play, Oedipus asks a Shepard from whom did he retrieve the baby from. "No— / god 's sake, no more questions! / You 're a dead man if I have to ask again" (230). After this threat, the Shepard confesses that the baby was from the house of Laius, confirming that Laius is Oedipus 's father. If Oedipus hadn 't been so determined to find the killer, he would have never discovered this information, and wouldn 't have ever his mutilated himself. Oedipus 's hamartia of ambition is the precise reason of why he is a