Hero to Zero

The Story of Oedipus is an extremely sad one. It is also very disturbing. The great hero Oedipus, who defeated the Sphinx and its riddles, ended up in a position that lead almost everyone who knew him to turn against him. If anyone was to give an example of what a tragic story looks like, Oedipus Rex would be the perfect story to mention. It is a complete tragedy that Oedipus did something so awful and yet he had no control over it.

In the beginning of the story, pages 4 through 6, the priest of Zeus is explaining to Oedipus everything that is going wrong in Thebes, hoping maybe he could do something about it. During this time, the citizens of Thebes thought of Oedipus as a hero and they completely trusted him. As the story goes on, however, the people of Thebes begin to lose their trust in Oedipus and begin to despise him. When they found out that their hero had married his own mother and with her had four children, they turned against him without any hesitation whatsoever. On page 75, they even sad they wished they had never known him.

​Something really sad about this tale is that almost none of the citizens show any sympathy towards Oedipus for what had happened to him. They did not even think about how Oedipus did not do what he did on purpose, and they treated him like he did do it on purpose. They just turned against him, even after the fact that they had looked up to him before.This particular example of tragedy shows how someone can be up high on a pedestal and then fall in the blink of an eye. 

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