Oedipus Rex as Ideal Tragic HeroIf we allow ourselves full sympathy for the hero, there is no doubt that Oedipus Rex fulfills the function of a tragedy, and arouses fear and pity to the highest degree. But the modern reader, approaching classical drama not only with the aim of having fun, will not always surrender to the emotional effect. He is inclined to worry about Greek fatalism and the justice of Oedipus's fall, and by failing to find a satisfactory solution to these intellectual difficulties he loses half the pleasure the drama should have produced. Perhaps we worry too much about Greek notions of destiny in human life. We are inclined to regard them with a lively antiquarian interest, as if they were something remote and peculiar; yet in reality the essential difference between these notions and the more familiar ideas of a later time is so slight that it need not concern the naïve and understanding reader. After all, the poet's fundamental purpose is not to teach us these things. but to construct a tragedy that fully fulfills its proper function. However, for the literary scholar who feels obliged to solve the double problem: how to reconcile the tragedy of Oedipus with a rational conception of life? and how does Oedipus himself meet the Aristotelian requirements for a tragic hero? there is a simple answer in the ethical teaching of the great philosopher in whose eyes the Oedipus Rex seems to have been almost a perfect tragedy. In other words, we compare the ideal of Ethics with the ideal of Poetics. Aristotle believes that the goal of human effort is happiness, that is, an unhindered activity of the soul in... middle of paper. .....second reason. In the Oedipus Rex Sophocles had already demonstrated the opposite. The man who sees only one side of the matter and immediately, driven by his uncontrolled emotions, acts according to that imperfect vision, meets a merciful and terrible fate, in accordance with the great laws which the gods have created. the philosophy of Aristotle and Sophocles is clearly expressed in the play itself. “May fate find me again,” sings the chorus, “winning the praise of reverent purity in all words and deeds sanctioned by those laws of sublime scope, called to life through the high and clear sky, whose father is only Olympus; their parent There was no race of mortal men, no, nor will oblivion ever put them to sleep: the god is mighty in them, and grows not old." Works Cited: Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1991.