Considered by many to be the greatest of the classical Greek tragedies, Sophocles' Oedipus the King ("Oedipus Tyrannus") is set in the remoteness of ancient Greece and has come down to us in the form of a tragic myth supposedly inspired by real events and real people. Yet for the inhabitants of ancient Athens, Oedipus the King represented "personages who fell into disaster because of their positions of power and prestige" and, as human beings, "became susceptible to deadly mixture of error, ignorance and violent arrogance” (Martin 134). The Greek philosopher Aristotle continually referred to this play in his Poetics, emphasizing the characteristics of the ideal tragic poem, and in the latter years of the 19th century Sigmund Freud adapted this myth as the basis for one of his most controversial psychoanalytic interpretations , being the “Oedipal Complex”. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay The Sophocolcean interpretation of the myth of King Oedipus of Thebes seems to lie within the horror and fascination of the unspeakable that lies at the heart of the game. When Oedipus leaves his palace in the final scene of the play, he is blind; his mask is stained by the blood of his father King Laius; he committed incest with his own mother, only to realize that her children are his real brothers and sisters. As Stephen Berg notes, at this point, Oedipus “is no longer a man. There is one thing, “this accursed thing, naked and holy”. With this, Oedipus became the symbol of something both sacred and cursed and by the end of the play, Sophocles, the Greek tragedian par excellence, has extended this curse far beyond ordinary life and well into the world natural to the ancient Greeks who considered Oedipus as the hero/tragic figure par excellence, but at the same time the common man of society. full of piety, arrogance and tyranny which, according to Sophocles, is the “tyrannos (the tyrant king) who sleeps in the soul of all men” (Berg 17). In Aristotle's case, Oedipus the King was not only interpreted as a powerful myth but also as the source of what defines true tragedy. For Aristotle, this meant “an imitation of an action, not a story, which is earnest and complete and through pity and fear the proper purging of these emotions is effected” (Martin 136). Thus, the central character in a tragedy like Oedipus the King must feel a certain sense of virtue despite feelings of pity and fear for his eventual downfall, which creates a kind of indignation in the reader or viewer. Furthermore, such a character cannot wallow in evil; he must be someone “who is neither remarkable in virtue nor full of righteousness, but who, through some fatal flaw (hamartia), meets his end” (Woodard 178). Additionally, as a myth based on Greek legend, Oedipus the King, as far as Aristotle was concerned, is a prime example of conflict between the hero (protagonist) and a higher force, such as fate or the fates of the gods. In ancient Greek culture, this idea was central to the way mortal man interacted with the gods and helped remind the citizens of Athens that life's successes and failures gave rise to problems of far too much moral complexity. great to be taken casually or arrogantly. At the advent of the 20th century, the interpretation of Oedipus Rex took on a new meaning, notably through the formulation of Sigmund Freud's "Oedipal Complex", the result of his own efforts at self-analysis in the fall of 1897. As Richard Webster points out, Freud recognized “that his father was innocent.”, 1966.