Sophocles was completely ahead of his time and employed these rules in Oedipus Rex. Aristotle cites this play often throughout the Poetics (Elsom 78). The story tells the audience what happened on a day, in a scene, and in a place (outside the palace of Thebes). Included in this perfect mix of a great piece of tragedy was the concept of “Catharsis”. The idea of ​​Catharsis recurs throughout the play: "Catharsis was an emotional cleansing felt by the audience in which all the emotional tensions of the tragedy would be resolved." (Rye 146). The best tragic plot is another decisive factor for Aristotle to say that this tragedy is a brilliant representation of a perfect tragedy. Aristotle loved “the plausibility of reversal (peripeteia) and dramatic irony” (Segal 146). The anagnorisis or awareness of truth in the play coincides with the reversal of Oedipus' fortunes (Segal 18). Aristotle states that the audience realizes and intellectualizes the play and emotional pathos of the reversal (Segal 146). Aristotle explained that Oedipus failed because he suffered greatly from his ambiguous self-identification. According to critics, "...Oedipus suffered from tragic defects of character, from his vain curiosity in consulting the oracle about his birth, from his pride in refusing to yield the way on his return from the oracle, and from his fury and violence in attacking four