Oedipus and Troy Maxson

According to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, the famous play “Oedipus the king” by Sophocles fit all of qualifications. Oedipus is a tragic hero since his particular characteristic is king. In another play “Fences” by August Wilson, the main character Troy Maxson, is different with Oedipus. He is not a tragic hero of Aristotle’s concept, but he is a modern tragic. Oedipus was definitely a tragic hero, but Troy is not matching it. Following the Aristotle’s definition of tragic hero: “Aristotle observes that the protagonist, the hero or chief character of a tragedy, is a person of high estate, apparently a king or queen or other member of royal family. ” (Aristotle 707) Oedipus He was born to the King and Queen of Cornith. He was a king, born in noble. As a king, he had noble soul, and he worked hard to protect his people. When blind prophet Teiresias did not want to tell him the truth, he insisted to get the answer. Oedipus told Teiresias: “You all but killed him with your own hands: if you had eyes, I’d say the crime was yours, and yours, and yours alone.” Oedipus has very strong determination to find murder. He thought he had a responsibility to find out the truth, and punished the murder to save the country. On the other hand, Troy Maxson was a common person trying to do his response, but did not do it very well. Troy is a fifty-three years old Africa American. Many years ago, he was a baseball player. He was too old to enter the Negro Leagues to play in the major leagues. In the journal “The Cambridge companion to August Wilson-10 Safe at home?” mentioned that , “This was also the time in which Wilson was a teenager and high school student, and experienced the full force of white racism.”( ) In that time, African American was not acceptable by white people, so he was treated badly, and affected his personality. He did not agree Cory to play football because he had a bad experience of playing baseball. He did not respect his son’s dream, and