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Oedipus Rex: Free will vs. Fate

In a Greek play, Aristotle defined the term ‘tragedy’ as ‘a man not preeminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice or depravity, but by some error in judgment… the change in the hero’s fortune must not be from misery to happiness, but on the contrary, from happiness to misery’. From this definition, he further expanded it by defining the profile of the Classical Greek tragic hero, basing it on what he considered the best tragedy ever written, Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex. He felt that a tragedy should consist of the hero’s goodness and superiority, a tragic flaw in which the hero makes fatal errors in judgment which eventually lead to his downfall, a tragic realization in which the main character understands how he has unknowingly helped to bring about his own destruction and the absence of freewill in his life.
Oedipus was a good ruler: just, compassionate and sympathetic. When the priests of Thebes came to him, pleading for help...

Posted by: Quentina Green

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