Oedipus the King By Sophocles? Please help me!?

Question

Please help me! I need to know what his major failings were and what his character flaws were. I did read it....i just don't understand it. Any ideas would help. Thanks so much! =D

Answer 1

He is pretty much the token greek tragic hero.  Look up the definition for that and it will pretty much tell you.

Answer 2

He's kinda cocky.  And he acts before he thinks--like how he killed his father on the road (not that he knows it's his dad, of course!)  just because they had an argument.

This page has some info about him if you scroll down a bit:

http://classics.uc.edu/~johnson/tragedy/...

And that page gets at the idea of "hubris" being his problem/flaw, so check out this page for more about what hubris means:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris

But basically it means being self-important instead of thinking of others and of the consequences of your actions.  Think about how Oedipus is mostly into acting rather than thinking.

And hats off to you for reading the play.  :)