Sophocles' life lasted from 497 BC to 405 BC. Throughout his 92 years of existence, he managed to write many tragic plays and one of his most famous is Oedipus Rex. In Oedipus Rex, he presents Oedipus as king of Thebes and then ends the play with this same king, as a blind beggar. His downfall is not linked to any other character in the play; the only one responsible is therefore Oedipus. Oedipus's flaws lead him to end the play as a blinded beggar. Even if Oedipus is a victim of fate, his arrogance, his attention to the people of Thebe and his search for certainties will be flaws that lead to his tragic end. His arrogance is one of the problems that ruined him. Throughout the play, his anger and impatience are glaring elements of his arrogance and downfall. At the beginning of the play, he wanted to end Laius' murder as quickly as possible, to the point that he wanted to exile anyone who knew anything about the case. “Let him exhaust his life / in misery to a miserable end,” this quote suggests his lack of patience as well as his anger at ending this matter in haste. Teiresias, a blind man, foreshadowed his fate from the beginning of the play, by accusing him of Laius' death. At this point, his anger also clarifies the event in which Oedipus kills a passerby at the intersection of three roads. Later in the play, this passerby revealed himself to be Laius, his own father. His attention to the people of Thebe is also another issue that led to his downfall. Having previously been able to decipher the riddle of the sphinx, he believed he could once again save his people from the plague, but he was wrong since he was the cause. This proves that Oedipus' main concern was to avenge Lauise's death and thus end the plague. ...... middle of paper ...... knew who his real parents were and would thus have avoided this tragic end. To return to Oedipus' blindness, it was for him the only way to pay for the suffering endured by those around him. For Oedipus, the moral dilemma did not have much impact and he needed a physical handicap, which would be visible to all those who had to suffer because of his mistakes. His blindness is also partly due to his shame at having brothers and sisters who are in fact his daughters and sons born of incest. In conclusion, fate played a minor role in his downfall, but Oedipus' actions were the major factors. Oedipus' tragic end is therefore due to his arrogance, his interest in the people of Thebes and his search for truth. The effect of these faults was that he began the novel in a royal manner and ended it as a blind beggar, two extreme statuses..