Story and style are fundamental features of literature, art, and life.

 What is a story? It always involves irony in that it happens when a narrative loops back to comment in a skewed way on its original conditions while narratives are just sequential observations of events, as in a chronicle, which can include causes and characters but not the closure that comes from showing a reflection of the beginning in the end. So Aristotle was correct in thinking stories had beginnings, middles and ends but the three stages can be specified as opening situations, development, and reflections of what has changed. A conventional interpretation of “Oedipus Rex”, which was the model for tragedy in Aristotle, is an exemplification of the just said theory of story. Oedipus begins as a person immensely successful because of his persona;; attributes. He solves the riddle of the Sphinx and so saves thebes through his insight and daring and persistence. He marries the reigning queen and so solidifies the throne. The body of the play, its development, shows him to be continuing his inquiries into the basis of things even if warned that he might delve into secrets left unopened, but it is in his nature to probe. The end of his story is  a  disaster that turns his virtues upside down, showing him to have engaged in  hubris, because his queen was his mother and Oedipus had killed his own father and was blinded for his seeing too much. Whether hubris always has that result or whether circumstance did him in is left for the audience to contemplate in consideration of how upended a life can be, the outcome a departure from the elements of the original situation.