thinks that he is escaping his fate; however, he ends up killing a man at the crossroads, who he
later discovers was, in fact, his father. The extraordinary circumstance continues to develop as
Oedipus, upon entering Thebes and answering the Sphinx’s riddle, thus conquering a plague
within the city, is offered a Kingship and marries the widowed Queen Iokate. The marriage
seals Oedipus’s fate, because his new bride is also his mother. Oedipus’ downfall begins with
his determination to discover the killer of his wife’s former husband, King Laios. After calling
upon the soothsayer, Oedipus still is blind to the fact of who he really is. Iokate finally figures it
out and tells Oedipus to go no farther with the subject. He refuses to drop his investigation, thus
revealing his tragic flaw, or hamartia, which seems to be pride. The Queen ends up killing
herself in shame. Upon finding Iokate’s dead body, Oedipus realizes his true identity.
Reflecting his understanding of wrongdoing, he imposes a punishment for being “blind” by
cutting out his own eyes. Sophocles’ moral message seems to be that one cannot escape
destiny. To complete the tragic hero profile, Oedipus inspires pity in audiences. Viewers
realize that they, too, could behave as he does under these extraordinary circumstances.
Like Oedipus, Antigone also exhibits tragic hero traits, although not as conclusively.
Antigone is the daughter of King Oedipus and Queen Iokate, making her also of noble birth.
Her quagmire occurs when, against the tenants of King Creon, she buries her brother
Polyneices. In ancient Geece, this was considered to be Antigone’s duty. The gods also
mandated proper burial, but since Creon identified Polyneices as a traitor, burial is forbidden.
He tells the people of Thebes that “…no one shall bury [Polyneices], no one morn for him, But
his body must lie in the fields, a sweet treasure For carrion birds to find as they search for food”
(108). Antigone gets caught in the act of burying her brother, and this marks the beginning of
her downfall. Creon sentences her to be locked in a cave. His original decree would have had
her stoned to death, but he revised this since Antigone is not only his niece, but also the fiancée
of his son, Prince Haimon. She is left to die, apparently by suffocation or starvation; however,
she hangs herself before Haimon can come to save her. In the case of Antigone, there is no
apparent realization of wrongdoing. In other words, Antigone appears to never acknowledge
her tragic flaw, which, like Oedipus, seems to be pride. Nevertheless, there is no evidence of
discovery (or anagnorisis). She believes that what she did was not wrong; therefore, her
character strays from the strict tragic hero guidelines Aristotle introduced. The moral message
in the play Antigone seems to be that Antigone herself is standing up for a divine law that she
believes in. By standing against King Creon and his law, Antigone appears to be encouraging
audiences to stand up for what they believe in—and be prepared to die.
Similar to Oedipus and Antigone, Medea also, to some extent, displays Aristotle’s
characteristics of a tragic hero. Medea is the daughter of Aeetes, who is the King of Colchis
and the son of Helios, the Sun god, thus making her of noble birth. Medea’s downfall begins
early in the plot, when she finds out that her husband, Jason, is going to be married to Creon’s
daughter Glauke. Medea turns completely against Jason, even though he carefully describes his
royal marriage to her: “...first, it was an act of common sense, secondly unselfish, and, finally, a
mark of [his] devotion to [Medea] and all [his] family” (144). Later, Jason again says that his
marriage to Princess Glauke is “to safeguard [Medea] and rear young princes to be brothers to
[their] sons... so make [their] family solid” (145). Medea justifiably refuses to accept Jason’s
excuse, and she begins her rampage. She appears to do everything in her power to hurt Jason
in any way she can. After arranging a safeguard in Athens by King Aegeus, Medea begins her
plot to revenge her hurt. Medea kills Jason’s fiancée, Glauke, and Glauke’s father, King
Creon. She then continues her rampage by killing her own two sons and finally rides off into the
sky with their bodies in a dragon-drawn chariot. The Gods seem to condone what she has
done. Like Oedipus, there is a discovery of wrongdoing; however, the audience reaction of this
play seems to shift. At the beginning of the play, our sympathies are with Medea and what she
has to go through, but in the end, we feel pity for Jason and how he is left with nothing. It is
interesting that Medea who would normally signify a character of reproduction is turned into a
seemingly anti-reproductive demon. Still, she fits within the tragic hero definition because she
does finally discover her wrongdoing and how it leads to her downfall. Medea’s life becomes
miserable after she kills her own children and when she realizes she will never know love again.
She is also devastated after being exiled from her home city, and she identifies her pain and
suffering as a “broken heart.”
The Greek heroes Oedipus, Antigone and Medea share, in varying degrees, most of the
qualities that make up a tragic hero: being of noble birth, being surrounded by an extraordinary
circumstance, and gaining self-awareness or some kind or knowledge through their downfall,
which, in some cases, helps audiences view them as sympathetic.
