Oedipus the King is a story that explores tragedy in a very interesting way. It takes a man, a king, Oedipus, and his perfect life and strips it away almost instantaneously. As the king of Thebes, Oedipus had a wife, kids, servants, friendly brother in laws, and a palace, however, plague had struck his citizens. Being a righteous man, he attempts to help his people in any way he can. In his search for the salvation of his people, he unearths truths about himself that had been foretold by a prophecy many years prior. The story follows a relatively traditional tragic model. The main character, a hero, is on top of the world, leading his kingdom, and being successful and then it is all stripped away. The hero falls hard. It is an incredibly sad story, however, to connect it to my first blog post, it does produce that "paradoxical" positive reaction among its readers. Oedipus, while being incredibly weird and sad, is very entertaining book. It is simply interesting. The reader empathizes with Oedipus as he is going through his tragedy.
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