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“OEDIPUS THE KING” The feature of the tragic hero as exemplified in Sophecles’ “Oedipus the King” makes the tragic character a great paradox. For unlike most, the tragic hero emerges as anything but a social person. He may begin that ....

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.... not particularly compatible with such heroic self-assertion. And the human being who sets himself or herself up to live life only on their own terms, as the totally free expressions of their own wills, is going to come to a nasty end. However grand and imaginatively appealing the tragic stance might be, it is essentially an act of defiance against the gods (or whoever rules the cosmos) and will push the tragic hero to an act of inevitable self-destruction. We cannot have life entirely on our own terms for very long. What makes Oedipus so compelling is not that he suffers horribly and endures at the end an almost living death. The force of the play co ....