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Oedipus Rex Analysis

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Aristotle proves that his praise towards attributing Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex as the most important tragedies of all time is well-established by the theories laid down in his Poetics. It is still considered to be relevant since it manages to relate to any generation, regardless of age and race, and as it strongly incites sympathy from the audience – in that, we might be too eager to know if he would be at least free from awful misery he had to suffer upon his death, and also, it elicits fear in having the same situation to coincidentally happen to us. Aristotle characterizes these emotions as inseparable in tragedy as he said that what we pity in others is also what we fear for ourselves. Oedipus Rex used these two essential qualities to generate …show more content…

Aristotle implied that a good beginning would introduce a ‘fresh start’ to its viewers which is illustrated in the play by starting with the crisis build-up, instead of directly presenting the main problem to the audience. The magnitude of this play is best known for its extreme reversal – the trope wherein a good man transitions from happiness to unhappiness due to great error or hamartia, which is according to Aristotle, the best kind of plot since it functions as structurally self-contained and complex at the same time. The downfall of Oedipus occurs just by following his moral convictions and strong sense of loyalty towards truth. This correlates with the secondary element of tragedy which is the character; the plot is driven further to its terror by the complementing consistency of Oedipus for the search of truth. His character don’t really provide anything substantial other than a piece to put things into action. Additionally, the play also followed the basic virtues of the hero being generally good, likeable, and someone of higher status but not perfect (for effectively heightening the fear to be plausible enough). And the primary precursor of the character’s motivation would arrive and produce a certain thought, or theme of the entirety. In this case, the

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