Oedipus meets the definition of a good man? As a young man, Oedipus learned of his destiny to kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus flees to a distant land to escape his terrible fate and inadvertently fulfills the prophecy. Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and enters his mother's bed. Was Oedipus a good man who happened to suffer an unfortunate fate, or was he a truly bad person whose fate was simply right? If we accept the Aristotelian view of good and evil, as expressed in The Good, Oedipus was indeed a good man by saving the city, ruling justly and seeking the truth, although his anger could be seen as a flaw. the city of Thebes, Oedipus found them under the curse of the Sphinx. In reality he obtained the position of king of Thebes by rendering the city a great service, namely the salvation of the city from the plague of the Sphinx. Aristotle praised the kind of intelligence and practical wisdom that Oedipus displayed in his solution to the riddle as a component of overall goodness. If not for Oedipus' virtuous action in saving Thebes, the citizens would have suffered unspeakable disasters at the merciless hands of the Sphinx. Having demonstrated his worth as a good man and his concern for the citizens of what was apparently a foreign city, Oedipus was well-liked by the people of Thebes. and simply, trying to help them in times of need. Aristotle believed that man's good lay in doing his job well. A good carpenter was someone who worked his wood and built things as best he could; a good ruler justly presided over his people. Oedipus was a go......middle of paper......lege Editori, 1999.Aristotle. "The Good." Dramatic theory and criticism. Ed. Bernard F. Dukore. Fort Worth: Harcourt, 1974. Benardete, Seth. "Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrant." In Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Dodds, E. R. “On the Misunderstanding of the Oedipus Rex.” Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex: A Collection of Critical Essays.Ed. Michael J. O'Brien. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1968. 17-29.Harmon, William and C. Hugh Holman. A literature manual. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.Knox, Bernard MW The Heroic Character: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1964. Sophocles. "Oedipus Rex." An Introduction to Literature, 11th ed.Ed. Sylvan Barnett, et al. New York: Longmann, 1997.