Similarities Between Oedipus Rex And Othello

Most characters that appear in tragedies have one common similarity. This is that they all have a tragic flaw that leads to their downfall in the end. This tragic flaw can be many different things such as greed or anger issues, but the two most common are hubris, or excessive pride, and jealousy. In Oedipus Rex and Othello, we can see major examples of these two tragic flaws, plus a little bit of greed from a secondary character in Othello. This shows that tragedies typically follow the same storyline. Of course this is not meant as actually the same story. Basically these stories contain someone who has a lot of power or high social status with a tragic flaw that leads to their death or loss of power. That statement alone describes both Oedipus

Later on, he finds out that he is the son of Laius, and he actually did kill him. He then blinds himself, is stripped of his title, and is exiled (Sophocles). There is irony shown throughout this entire play. First of all, the most obvious sight of irony is the fact that Oedipus wants to have the murderer of Laius put to death, but he in fact is the murderer. This is verbal irony because he is saying to get rid of the murderer, but that is himself. He of course does not want to banish himself. This is the basis for the entire play. The other piece of irony that we see is the fact that he is blind to the truth of being the murderer, and then later on he literally blinds himself. This is also tied in with the fact that he is cruel to Tiresias because he is blind, but Oedipus is also blind but in a different way (Dems). Othello is a story written by William Shakespeare. This tragedy includes a military man, Othello, who fell in love with the senator’s daughter, Desdemona. The senator, Brabantio, gets very upset but lets it go and disowns his daughter. He tells Othello that he better be careful because Desdemona betrayed her father, so it is possible that she will betray Othello. Othello is

They were both caused by the same thing, which was a tragic character flaw. Oedipus was full of hubris. He was so proud, and he thought there was no possible way that it was his own fault. His pride was also partly because of the fact that he solved the riddle to get rid of the last plague, and this is why he became king. The people loved him so much after that. However, Othello’s tragic flaw was his raging jealousy. This was such a problem that he actually killed the girl that he was in love with because of his jealousy. He was also very gullible. He barely needed any convincing from Iago to become suspicious of his own wife. To make the two even more closely related, Othello also suffered from hubris. This ties in with killing his wife. He felt the need to kill her because his pride was hurt by her “affair.” He did not want to be made to be a fool, so he killed her. Therefore, both of these stories include ironies that are caused by a tragic flaw in the main characters. This means that the ironies in Oedipus Rex and Othello reinforce each other by teaching the audience to not be proud or jealous. These are both common flaws that almost everybody deals with, but if we let them get out of hand, we could end up like Othello or