Oedipus Flaws

In the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, the Greek audience experiences Oedipus’ heartbreaking journey to find out who he really is and how his hubris and many other fatal flaws contribute to his downfall. The Greeks loved a good tragedy and Oedipus Rex did not disappoint. In this play Oedipus was put on a mountaintop as a baby because his birth parents, King Laïos and Queen Iocastê, were told that one day Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. To prevent this from happening King Laïos and Queen Iocastê put holes through his ankles and tied them with leather so Oedipus would not crawl away from the mountaintop and eventually come back and fulfill his prophecy. King Laïos and Queen Iocastê left baby Oedipus to the Gods on top of the
Because of this, the Greeks found the play humorous as well. The story of Oedipus was familiar to the audience, like Romeo and Juliet or Humpty Dumpty is familiar to us, so the knew what was going to happen before coming to the theater.The audience saw many flaws in Oedipus that contributed to his downfall. Hubris was one of them. Oedipus grew up with a father as a king so he lived a very privileged life and the audience saw that. Because of his hubris he thought he was untouchable, that he could not do anything wrong. When the soothsayer came to see Oedipus his arrogance and ignorance was blatantly obvious, “You dare say that! Can you possibly think you have some way of going free, after such insolence” (Sophocles 284)? The soothsayer would not tell Oedipus what he saw and because of that Oedipus got mad and started blaming the soothsayer for killing King Laïos. That showed how ignorant and arrogant Oedipus was, and how he saw himself as untouchable. Oedipus also thought that he was invincible after he defeated the riddle of the Sphinx. The gods used his wit and knowledge and turned that against him because the lesson for man is that he is not as smart as the