Beginning of Essay
The downfall of a hero follows from his very nature. In Sophocles play, Oedipus the King, (reprinted in X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, 6th ed. New York, NY 1995), the playwright focuses on a man named Oed ....

Middle of Essay
.... he becomes the new king by solving a riddle and lifting a plaque from the city. Oedipus quickly marries a woman named Iocaste, the queen, and together they have four children. In Thebes the murder of the old King Laios remains unknown, a plaque is again placed upon the city by the gods. Oedipus, being the new leader of Thebes, pledges to discover the identity of the murderer so he can end the disaster. In his searching, Oedipus discovers that he is the murderer of the king and eventually discovers that Iocaste is really his own mother. In a Greek tragedy the hero is a character amply capable of choices, capable, too of accepting the consequences. ....