Oedipus Rex
Sophocles (-429)
“A man investigates a murder, discovers he is the murderer, and that the victim was his father. Aristotle called it the perfect tragedy. He was right.”
Character Analysis
The word 'Oedipus' means 'swollen foot' — his identity is written in his body from birth. He is both the greatest and the most polluted man in Thebes simultaneously, and neither fact cancels the other. His defining quality is relentless inquiry — he cannot stop seeking the truth even when the truth will kill him. This makes him the prototype of the intellectual hero and the detective protagonist, and it makes his fall uniquely Greek: he is undone by his greatest virtue.
Commands before he asks. Uses royal 'we' at the start, shifts to desperate 'I' as authority erodes. His vocabulary is of judgment and accusation — he thinks like a king even when speaking as a husband.