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Oedipus The King Literary Analysis

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When writing Oedipus the King, Sophocles utilized a traditional and precise style of writing. Sophocles wrote this play with each of the occurrences as part of a well-developed cause-and-effect chain, ultimately making Oedipus the King an Aristotelian tragedy. The plot is an ideal case of the removal of the absurd and the treatment of traditional elements of the myth. Sophocles does not embellish any of the irrational parts of the myth. When writing an Aristotelian tragedy there are many elements that must be addressed, one of the many is hamartia. The play is a perfect illustration of hamartia being a mistake or error instead of a flaw. Oedipus’s downfall was not caused because he was evil, but because he did not know who he was. If he truly wanted to avoid the oracle and his ultimate fate, leaving Corinth was a mistake, killing an older man was a mistake, and marrying an older woman was a mistake.
Oh never to have come here
With my father’s blood upon me! Never
To have entered that wretched bed— The selfsame one!
More primal than sin itself, this fell to me. (Sophocles 73)
In search to discover the past, angry with the murderer of Laius, and sending for the Herdsman, each of the events that he followed for such good reasons …show more content…

The peripeteia of the play is the Messenger's reverse of intent. In the quest of helping Oedipus through telling him that Polybus and Merope were not his real parents, the Messenger had actually created the complete opposite effect. By providing that crucial piece of information, it had revealed that Oedipus had in fact, killed his father and married his mother. This peripeteia is, as Aristotle recommended, directly connected to the anagnorisis of the play, the anagnorisis, or awakening, of the play is when the Messenger and Herdsman piece together the whole story of Oedipus, allowing him to identify his true self. By doing this, Oedipus had gained the crucial knowledge he had

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