Oedipus: The Ultimate Tragic Hero

Abstract
Aristotle holds that a tragic hero should have the qualities of spoudaios, hamartia, and peripeteia. This essay carefully examines Oedipus, the protagonist of Sophocles’ tragic drama Oedipus Rex, looking for these three main qualities. Using quotes from several scholarly sources, including Aristotle’s own Poetica, it is shown that in his nobility, in his error in judgment, and in his tragic reversal of fortune, Oedipus perfectly exemplifies Aristotle’s three-fold definition of a tragic hero.

 
Oedipus: The Ultimate Tragic Hero
“This is the king who solved the famous riddle | And towered up, most powerful of men. | No mortal eyes but looked on him with envy, | Yet in the end ruin swept over him (Exodos, 293-296),” sings Chorogos to all the Men of Thebes at the sorrowful conclusion of Sophocles’(425 B.C.) Oedipus Rex. Oedipus, the protagonist of this drama, begins as a noble and respected king, but discovers that he has unknowingly killed his own father and married his own mother. He subsequently loses his family and his kingdom, blinds himself and goes into exile. In his nobility, in his error in judgment, and in his tragic reversal of fortune, Oedipus perfectly exemplifies Aristotle’s three-fold definition of a tragic hero.
Oedipus is nobility three times over: he is a prince by birth to Jocasta and Laios and thereby heir to the throne of Thebes, he is a prince via adoption to Polybus and Merope and thereby heir to the throne of Corinth, and he becomes the king of Thebes by election. Aristotle himself uses the noble Oedipus as an example of what a hero should be. In Poetica XIII, Aristotle (350 B.C.) says, “He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous—a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.” From the initial lines of the prologue of Oedipus the King, it is shown that Oedipus is not a common ruler – he is a great king. The people revere him, almost elevating him to godlike status. Likewise, Oedipus loves the people; he is compassionate and committed to his responsibility to protect those under his dominion. He aches for the pain of his blighted city, even to the point of losing sleep (Prologue, 67).
Oedipus is a just king, an upright king. His relentless pursuit of the truth is admirable, even though it is this very thing that causes his downfall, as Creon states in the Exodos, “…but rather think | How, … you served your own destruction (290-291).” King Oedipus refuses to be dissuaded from his goal of uncovering King Laios’ murderer, and he does not stop even when he himself is implicated. Martin Kallich (1966), in his article “Oedipus: From Man to Archetype,” says “Oedipus suffers not because of his guilt, but in spite of his goodness (p33).” Thus, as Aristotle’s definition demands, Oedipus is the spoudaios, or noble, hero whose fate is undeserved yet still self-caused. In all this, he is not too far removed from the people, which is another requirement of the tragic hero. The priest who begs audience of King Oedipus in the prologue tells him, “…you were never | Better informed than we, nor could we teach you: (39-40).”
Oedipus is most certainly noble; however, there is much argument regarding whether his hamartia, or tragic flaw, was moral or intellectual. “A tragedy must portray a hero who, in a moral sense, is worthy of respect (spoudaios) and who makes a significant intellectual (not moral) error which leads to his downfall from happiness to misery,” states Leon Golden (1984) in his essay “Othello, Hamlet, and Aristotelian Tragedy.” Some say that he is prideful and too quick to anger in his responses to Teiresias, the blind prophet; and to Creon, his brother-in-law, he is hasty to judge and draw conclusions. This could be misinterpreted as a moral error, but his response, as Golden (1984) says later in the same article, “occurs for the right moral reasons.” These are intellectual errors—Oedipus is simply acting out of his great concern for his kingdom. Even when he unknowingly kills his father, it is under provocation, and in what he thinks is self-defense; again, an intellectual, not a moral error.
Another factor that clearly plays into the hamartia of Oedipus is fate. Before Oedipus is conceived, King Laios is warned by an oracle that any son born to him and Jocasta would rise up and kill his father and sleep with his mother. Oedipus himself, upon inquiring of the oracle, is told that he will kill his father and sleep with his mother. In Janet Green’s (1993) “Review of ‘Oedipus Rex’” she says,
We have in the drama, then, not just bitter irony played out by incredible coincidence, nor
the story of a proud man rightly humbled. We have a powerful statement that the inscrutable gods exert extreme power over the unjust and the just, who suffer alike from their mysteriously random power.
In fact, the gods almost seem to purposely lead Oedipus astray, by telling him of his future grievous deeds, rather than his true heritage—that he was adopted by Polybus and Merope. In the end, Oedipus cries out that the gods hate him (Exodos, 123). In this seeming divine decree of Oedipus’ future, it is rightly asked how he can be held responsible. Any tragic flaw on his part seems small in comparison to the forces that appear to be at work behind the scenes. The conclusion that may be drawn here is that his true error was in attempting to avoid this future, yet even in this, his great integrity is shown. In his inner heart, he does not wish to commit these heinous deeds that the gods insist he will commit. “In a moral sense he is completely innocent of the crimes that have been committed because he did not will them and strenuously sought to avoid them,” says Golden (1983). He continues, “He did make serious intellectual errors, but they were morally justifiable mistakes which other good men who were not ‘perfect in virtue and justice’ might also have made.”
A running theme throughout the play is the intellectual blindness of Oedipus, and the blindness of those around him. The people of Thebes cry out to the gods for wisdom, Oedipus calls for the oracle, his wife Jocasta even questions the veracity of the oracle’s prophecies, but it is only the physically blind Teresias who is truly able to see that Oedipus is the cause of the recent plagues. Teresias points out the king’s true hamartia, that of intellectual blindness, with these pointed words: “You cannot see the evil (Scene 1, 149),” and again “But I say that you, with both your eyes, are blind (Scene 1, 196).” Teresias prophesies of Oedipus’ future physical blindness, the result of his inability to discern the horrible deeds that he has commited. This is the true reason behind his murder of the king, marriage of his mother, anger at Teresias, and even his accusal of Creon—Oedipus, who had once untangled the riddle of the Sphinx, was simply unable to see the reality behind of any of these situations. Oedipus’ anagnorisis, or recognition, of his blindness is very slow in coming, but eventually his eyes open up to the truth, and so begins his tragic downfall.
In Oedipus’ peripeteia, or reversal of fortunes, it is interesting to note that he who was once thrice noble, calls himself “Thrice miserable (Exodos, 151).” The obvious result of his downfall is his loss of the kingdom of Thebes, as well as his inability to reign over Corinth upon the death of his adopted father, Polybus. Oedipus reveals that his true misery is found in that he cannot bear to see his parents after death, his daughters, Antigone and Ismene, during life, or the images of the gods in either life or death (Exodos, 141-149). It is for this reason that he chooses to blind himself rather than commit suicide, thus fulfilling the prophecy of the prophet Teresias. Once again, his integrity shines through, as he is willing to execute punishment upon the murderer of King Laios, just as he had decreed before the people, even though the murder was done in ignorance, and the murderer turned out to be himself. The penalty Oedipus chose for himself was deemed harsh even by the chorus leader, who felt that blindness was a fate worse than death (Exodos, 139). Oedipus insists that blinding himself was just (Exodos, 141), again showing his spoudaios. Before leaving in exile, Oedipus begs forgiveness of Creon for his wrongful accusations, and takes the time to embrace his children and commit them to Creon’s guardianship. Charles Segal (1982) says, “He is not broken by suffering … The irrational extinction of earned good fortune and exterior power reveals a new source of strength in his tragic knowledge.”
Oedipus demonstrates spoudaios, hamartia, and peripeteia; nobility, error in judgment, and reversal of fortunes respectively. In these three areas and the characteristics pertaining to them, Oedipus more than qualifies as a tragic hero. In the words of Aristotle (350 B.C.) himself, “Now the best tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses—on the fortunes of Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, and those others who have done or suffered something terrible.”
 

References
Aristotle. (350 B.C.) Poetica XIII. Translated by Butcher, S. H. Retrieved from
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.2.2.html

Green, J. M. (1993, Fall) Review of Oedipus Rex. In the Explicator 52.1 2-3. Rpt. in Drama for Students.Ed. David M. Galens and Lynn M. Spampinato. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998.
Retrieved from Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 July 2010.

Golden, L. (1984, Summer) Othello, Hamlet, and Aristotelian tragedy. Shakespeare Quarterly
35.2, 142-156. Rpt. in Shakespearean Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Vol. 125. Detroit:
Gale, 2009. Retrieved from Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 July 2010.

Kallich, M. (1966) Oedipus: From man to archetype. Comparative Literature Studies 3.1, 33-35.Rpt. in Drama for Students. Ed. David M. Galens and Lynn M. Spampinato. Vol. 1.
Detroit: Gale, 1998. Retrieved from Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 July 2010.

Segal, C. (n.d.) Sophocles. Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome. Ed. T. James Luce. Vol. 1. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 July 2010.

Sophocles. (425 B.C.). Oedipus the king. In X. J. Kennedy, & D. Gioia, Literature An
Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing pp. 860-897. Boston: Longman,
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