A Tragic Hero

According to Aristotle, “A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language;… in a dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions.” This literary theory is used as a tool for analyzing Greek tragedy. The drama Oedipus the King by Sophocles could be considered a tragedy and Oedipus considered a tragic hero by Aristotle’s definition, for it follows all five steps. The first aspect of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy is “the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself”. What Aristotle means is that a good tragedy deals with one and only one issue throughout the entire play; this issue being especially serious and of high importance. For instance, the play Oedipus the King is based solely around one conflict: who murdered King Laius. In trying to figure this out, many truths are revealed about both Oedipus and Jocasta. Tiresias, the blind prophet, is the first to tell Oedipus that it was he who killed Laius, his real father, and married Jocasta, his real mother. Of course, neither Oedipus nor Jocasta believe this, until more pieces start to fall into place. First, Jocasta’s description of Laius’s death matched up almost perfectly with Oedipus’s encounter with a man who he ended up killing on the road. Then, a messenger from Corinth where Oedipus used to live arrived and explained that as a baby Oedipus was given to a shepherd who was asked to kill him, but the shepherd gave him up for adoption. Upon hearing this, Jocasta immediately knows that Oedipus is her son. In the end she kills herself, and when Oedipus also realizes the horrible truth, he gouges his eyes out. The second aspect of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy is “in appropriate and pleasurable language”. This refers to the role of the chorus in ancient Greek plays. The chorus