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Character analysis of oedipus in oedipus the king
Oedipus innocent
Is oedipus guilty give reasons in 600 words
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Jury, hear me out. Oedipus is innocent. One who ordinarily commits patricide and incest is guilty. However, Oedipus has special circumstances based on his early childhood. He was given away by his biological parents, Laius and Jocasta as an infant. Only by acts of mercy did he end up remembering that he was raised by Polybus, king of Corinth, and Merope, a Dorian. My client also has no true reason to have committed patricide and incest. I swear by the gods, Oedipus is innocent. First, Oedipus cannot be held responsible for patricide. Oedipus killed his own father in self defense without knowing that he was indeed Laius, his father. Jocasta and Oedipus were having a discussion where Jocasta was giving more details about Laius's death while Oedipus began to remember what happened. The elders of Thebes recalled Oedipus saying: He that led the way and the old man himself wanted to thrust me out of the road by force. I became angry... When the old man saw this he watched his moment, and as I passed he struck me from his carriage... my stick had struck him backwards from the car and he rolled out of it. And then I killed them all. If it happened there was any tie of kinship twixt this man and Laius. ("Oedipus the King" 937-948)
Because
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My client here does not have legitimate motivation for patricide and incest. After hearing that he killed his own father, married his own mother, and that his mother/wife committed suicide, all on the same day, he stabbed his own eyes out of grief. When Oedipus was questioned on scene for why he did so, he replied "Alas for me! And yet again, alas for me! The pain of stabbing brooches pierces me! The memory of agonizing shame!" (Oedipus the King 1568-1570). For what reason would a criminal stab his own eyes out like this? Would a criminal feel shame and depression to this
...e dealt with in a normal way. This is theatre. It has been crafted to look as though the fall is due to some error of action, strongly interlaced with fate. Yet despite all this, I do not feel that this is how the play has materialised. It seems to me as though Oedipus could not have stopped the actual horrific incest and patricide occurring, only the realisation of it. To me, as a non-believer in fate, nothing is due to Oedipus' character. He seems merely unfortunate, a victim of superstition. Yet to those of you who accept fate, then perhaps this could be the explanation. It is a completely subjective decision, based on a personal interpretation. This is something that I cannot decide. Thus I leave the decision open, but my decision closed. Neither is right, and neither is wrong.
-not knowing it was his biological father- could not be avoided, his ignorance in a certain way absolves him of all blame. As for the "incest" matter, Oedipus is certainly not guilty of such a thing for it was Jocasta who promised to marry him in the first place, we can blame Jocasta for the downfall as much as we can blame Oedipus for it. Oedipus is certainly not guilty of anything.
of a mother-son marriage. Greek law considers the act, not the motive. meaning that even though she nor Oedipus knew they were related, they committed. the crime of the.. & nbsp; Finally, Oedipus's guilt. In some ways, Oedipus was the most guilty of them all. Consider his 'hubris'. He regarded himself as almost a god, assuming. that since he alone had solved the sphinx's riddle, he was the one of the gods. favorites. He was very quick to judge, and judged on the most flimsy of evidence. He calls on Tiresias to tell him what he should do, and when he. doesn't like what he hears, Oedipus says, "Your words are nothing - futile".
Oedipus’ downfall was caused by his lack of knowledge, hasty decisions, and false justice. Bernard Knox says this clearly “these attributes of divinity – knowledge, certainty, justice - are all qualities Oedipus thought he possessed – and that is why he was the perfect example if the inadequacy of human knowledge, certainty, and justice”. Oedipus was meant do the crimes he committed based on the actions of his parents, but he did not have certainty of knowledge and made the rest of his life miserable. Oedipus caused his own downfall by lacking the qualities of knowledge, certainty, and
lack of self-control is illustrated when Oedipus kills his father in an argument over the right of
In the play Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus the tragic downfall of Oedipus the King brings forth the question was this outcome determined by his predestined fate or his own actions, and if he can be held accountable for his crime. The argument of Oedipus guilt or innocence dates back for centuries, yet there still is not a clear explanation to which side is accurate. King Laius of Thebes Oedipus’ biological father learned from the oracle that if he wed with Jocasta, he would perish at the hands of his son. To avoid the tragic fate Jocasta and Laius abandoned their infant son to the elements as an attempt to kill him. Subsequently, Oedipus is found and raised by King Polybius of Corinth as his own. Only to later return to Thebes in a desperate
So is Oedipus innocent or guilty? He is innocent because he does not know he is doing anything wrong and is trying to not let his terrible fate play out. Some people try to take their fate into their own hands to avoid a negative event that they have been warned may happen. Oedipus does this by planning to leave his mother and father, Polybus and
Since Oedipus had no knowledge of his birth parents, he cannot be accused of knowingly fulfilling the prophecy. He had no understanding of Laius as his birth father upon killing him. One might say that Oedipus is then guilty of murder regardless, but if he had killed in self defense, that cannot be true. Likewise, if Oedipus had no understanding of Jocasta as his birth mother, then he cannot be guilty of incest. Neither can he be guilty of defiling Laius’s marriage bed, as he did not know that Jocasta was the wife of the man he had murdered.
One event that directly led Oedipus to his fate was at the crossroads where Oedipus killed his biological father unknowingly. If Oedipus has acted wiser when King Laius struck him to move out of the road, Oedipus may have successfully avoided his fate. Oedipus also could have avoided marrying his mother, if he never went to Thebes or defeated the Sphinx by answering the Sphinx’s riddle correctly. Oedipus did have the ability to refuse to take the place of King Laius, he also had the ability to discontinue his investigation of King Laius’ death, however in his own free will Oedipus choose to continue his investigation by dig deeper to the root of his existence. While Oedipus’ personality ensures his fate to become reality, Jocasta and Laius also assisted Oedipus ' destiny to become reality. If Laius never struck Oedipus to move out of the road, King Laius may have returned safely to his queen and avoided his fate of being killed by his own son, and for Jocasta, she could have simply refused to marry someone half her age. After discovering his identity, Oedipus didn’t blame anyone for his misfortune not his parents, the servant that saved him as a baby or even the Oracle but himself. He chose to accept the consequences of his action, as he
Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, with whom he produces four children. These are terrible crimes, impious, immoral and illegal. However, the fact that he carries these out in ignorance, not conscious of his own actions, attributes them to severe misfortune and a cruel fate. He even tried, in vain, to avoid the completion of this destiny, leaving his believed home city of Corinth upon hearing it told to him at the Oracle of Apollo ("I heard all that and ran" 876). Thus, when it is revealed to him, this sudden revelation of his crimes within one day leads him to blind himself so that he can no longer see what he has done ("Nothing I could see could bring me joy" 1473). The blinding was not required by fate and is indeed self inflicted but he believed that it is just punishment for what he has done, and by doing so he regains some control over his fate ("hand that struck my eyes was mine...
Oedipus is guilty because, despite knowing the prophecy that he will commit parricide and incest, he yet kills an elderly gentleman and sleeps with an elderly women. The choice was his, and this accounts for his guilt.
Oedipus finds out that he is the killer of King Laius and will become the archetypal sacrificial scapegoat for the city of Thebes. Throughout this passage from the play, Oedipus is continually gathering incriminating evidence against himself from the source of his own wife and mother, Jocasta. He discovers through her attempted reassurance that his quest from Corinth set his fate to be the killer of his biological father and the sacrificial scapegoat for the welfare of the people and land of Thebes.
Oedipus did kill a man, and although he was not aware of his identity at the time, it could still be argued that he is not innocent because he was aware that a prophecy existed and he should not have killed anyone. In the context of an Ancient Greek audience, his act was justifiable, however reading this play in a modern context one must consider the culture of violence in Ancient Greece that could condone such an act. Oedipus’s act in the beginning of the play of cursing whoever Laius’s murderer was to “wear out his life/in misery to miserable doom!” (248-249) by cursing Laius’s murderer, he did curse himself and one could argue that by making this curse, he did somewhat bring upon himself all the tragedy at the end of the play. Jocasta is also not entirely innocent in that she did try to kill her child, which would have cleared her of any guilt in regards to the prophecy but for human morality raises more questions, and in trying to kill her child to prevent the prophecy she would defy the gods, which does not have positive
As a reader that is using the Reader-Response Criticism, the production of different responses of the text of Oedipus Rex is always different for each reader. The reader needs to examine the words thoroughly in their mind to come to an arguable conclusion. Oedipus has no fault in the actions that he did because he did not know at the moment, but how he tried to resolve things was not the way to go. The feeling I felt while reading the play is pure shock and hatred because of his actions, but he wouldn’t have done those things if he had known the truth. Although Oedipus was trying with all his power to find the culprit of his father, but while doing so, he showed weakness by his attributes, that led to his destiny.
Instead of blaming the gods or the fates or even the oracle, Oedipus instead does something which defines him as a tragic hero, he takes all of the blame and puts it on himself. Oedipus fully realizes that he murdered his father and slept with his mother after his long conversation with the blind prophet and shepherds (Sophocles, 465-479 1271-1310) However, it is when he sees his wife’s body hanging from the rope that he realizes fully what has happened, and that realization shakes Oedipus so much that he gouges his own eyes out in an attempt to both torture himself and accept his punishment as well as to no longer be able to see his once beautiful children, now turned into monstrosities in his eyes (Sophocles, 1395-1414) Oedipus accepts his fate completely near the end of the play, telling Creon to cast him out of Thebes with the words: “As for me, never condemn the city of my fathers to house my body, not while I’m alive, no, let me live on the mountains, on Cithaeron… let me die there, where they [Oedipus’s parents] tried to kill me” (Sophocles 1587-1594). It is with the accepting of his fate that Oedipus takes full responsibility for his own actions, despite the fact that he was unable to control his actions and he was ignorant of any crimes he was capable of. This is just another thing that makes him the epitome of a tragic hero, and it is the characteristic