Solomon marries the princess of Egypt and they live in the city of David while Solomon's palace in Jerusalem is being built. The Israelites, without any permanent temple to God made sacrifices to God on high places. Solomon is a highly religious man, for he obeys God's commandments, and worships him as instructed. He goes to Gibeon and offers 1,000 sacrifices to Yahweh.
One night, the Lord appears to him in a dream, and asks Solomon what he wants in return for being so loyal to him. Solomon asks for the skills of a good leader as many of his other servant have been. The Lord is pleased by this requests and gives him leadership abilities like no other. He also gives him riches, honor, and long life—so long as Solomon obeys his commandments.
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Solomon is a great host to Sheba, for he gave her everything she asked for from his abundant riches before she returned to her own land. Solomon is very very rich. In one year, he received 666 talents of gold, not including taxes and goods from traders, merchants, the kings of Arabia, and the governors of the land. With all that gold, Solomon made 500 shields and put them in the House of the Forest of Lebanon. He also made a great gold-overlaid ivory throne with two lions standing on each side of the armrests and one lion on each side of the 6 steps leading up to the throne. Even his cups are pure gold. Every three years Solomon's fleets come back from Tharshish full of gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. Everyone is dying to hear his opinion all the time, and he is constantly sent gifts of gold, silver, clothes, weapons, spices, horses, mules, and much, much more. Solomon amassed 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses, which he stations strategically throughout Israel. Solomon's traders did a lot of business with Egypt, trading horses and chariots for silver and turning around to sell them to the Hittites and the kings of Aram. But after all the wisdom and all the riches, Solomon wavers and breaks God's commandments. God commanded Solomon not to marry foreign women, because he knew they'd turn him to idolatry, but Solomon could not resist. Solomon loves them so much that he accumulates at least 700 princess-wives and 300 concubines and as he gets older, Solomon's wives turned his heart away from God and toward their gods. Solomon built temples for other Gods. Yahweh gets upset at Solomon and told him that he is going to lose his kingdom because of his betrayal. God waited until Solomon's death to take the kingdom from him so that he could let his son keep one tribe. God needed a situation in order to bring down Solomon’s empire. First there
Solomon, a slave, had been a leader when he worked in the cotton fields in the South. One day he decided to fly back to Africa with his youngest son, Jake, leaving behind his wife Ryna and their twenty other children.
The myths of David and Goliath and Odysseus and Polyphemos from the Hebrew bible and the Odyssey, respectively, are examples of the classic little hero versus large enemy story. From both the Hebrews and the Greeks we receive iterations of the same myth of how the gigantic antagonist belittles the seemingly frail young man simply because of his short stature compared to that of the antagonist’s, but in the end he is subdued by the young man with an uncommon method. Warrior Odysseus and shepherd boy David both encounter their own menacing giant, a Cyclops and the champion of Gath, who they bravely defeat which results in the increase of morale
Set ages apart, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex provide different perspectives on the topic of tragedy and what is defined as a tragic hero. Although Oedipus would be thought of as better representing the tragic hero archetype due to tradition and time period, the modern tragic hero of Oedipus Rex is more of a dismal one. Through analysis of their respective hamartias, it is exemplified that the New York businessman with his humble story proves to be more thought provoking than the King of Thebes and his melancholic tale. **By incorporating a more relatable character and plot, Arthur Miller lends help to making Willy Lowman spiral toward his own downfall while building more emotion and response from the audience than with Oedipus. When Oedipus learns of his awful actions, this invokes shock and desperation. With Willy Lowman, the audience goes for a bumpy ride until the eventual, but expected, crash. ** (NEEDS WORK)
Oedipus and Pentheus are both tragic Greek characters who help create their own endings. Through their character's flaws and blindness to what is going on around each of them, the story develops. The only consistent character in both plays who is able to understand past and present dangers is Teiresias, the blind prophet.
We see from this passage that Solomon is a loving devoted husband and father. He understands the relationship between a father and his children. Solomon appears through this writings to have been a good father.
Sophocles' trilogy of Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone is a powerful, tragic tale that examines the nature of human guilt, fate and punishment. Creon, Oedipus' uncle and brother-in-law, is the story's most dynamic character. His character experiences a drastic metamorphosis through the span of the three dramas. Creon's vision of a monarch's proper role, his concept of and respect for justice, as well as his respect for the design evolve considerably by the trilogy's tragic conclusion.
A detective story is a genre of fiction in which a person attempts to solve a crime. The detective may be a professional or an amateur, and generally has nothing to gain from solving the crime. However in Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King”, the main character Oedipus is not only determined to solve a crime, but he is also in pursuit to find his own identity. This is similar to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” where Sherlock Holmes has been hired to work as a detective in return for monetary compensation. Both situations enable Oedipus and Sherlock to gain from unraveling the mysteries that sweep their towns hence making these stories different from most detective stories.
The idea of fate has baffled mankind for centuries. Can humans control what happens to them, or is everyone placed in a predestined world designed by a higher power? The Epic of Gilgamesh and Oedipus The King highlight on the notion that no matter what, people cannot control what is destined to occur. Interestingly enough, many other distantly connected cultures had, and have similar gods or goddesses who play a role in the fate of individuals. Oedipus, King of Thebes, was told by the Oracle at Delphi that he would one day kill his father and marry his mother. Determined not to let this prophecy verify his fears, Oedipus does all in his power to prevent this from happening, yet fails. Similarly, Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, attempts to obtain immortality, but fails as well. Gilgamesh's and Oedipus's intense fear and ignorance cause them to try to interfere with their fates, leading to their failures and realization of the futility of trying to control destiny.
Since the beginning of time epic tales have been passed on from generation to generation as a form of entertainment. Even though each epic is different in its plot, every epic has certain features in common. The prime example of their similarities is their main character, the hero of the epic. The hero's behavior changes from the beginning to the end of the tale. Since the plot revolves around the epic hero, in most cases, they are made to seem God-like, or larger then life, in their capabilities and strengths. The hero constantly has to conquer major obstacles to achieve their initial and final goal. Usually the hero is tremendously suspicious of other characters intensions. Also, this character usually demonstrates examples of hubris throughout the tale, which ultimately makes his journey more difficult. The epic heroes differences vary but in the epic tale, The Odyssey written by Homer, and the Greek drama, Oedipus The King written by Sophocles, the differences is what makes Oedipus fail and Odysseus succeed. In both these tales, the powerful gods enormously affect their decisions and the consequences they eventually have to face.
Although Incendies (2010), filmed by Denis Villeneuve, is the rewrite of Sophocles’ play, Oedipus The King, these two stories have their own variations in them. Both of their narratives are surrounding with the same concept: nobody could escape from their family’s history, which it has some tragedy outcomes and violence as the characters’ journey begin. Each character from Oedipus Tyrannus and Incendies responds differently obtaining knowledge about their past, and the closure of these two stories are completely diverse.
Through the character of Oedipus, Sophocles shows the futility and consequences of defying the divine order. Oedipus served Thebes as a great ruler, loved by his subjects; but it is his one tragic flaw, hubris, which dooms his existence, regardless of the character attributes that make him such a beloved king.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross, in Death and Dying, discusses the stages one goes through when he or she comes to terms with his or her own fate. These stages include Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, and the medieval morality play, Everyman, by and anonymous author, both the title characters travel through these stages throughout the plot when they come to meet their fates or misfortunes.
Although both The Iliad and Oedipus the King portray humans with very little control of their lives, in The Iliad the gods have some of the control, but are subservient to the power of fate and their biggest role in the story is to be an object of blame. This is contrasted by the view of power in Oedipus the king where the gods are much more involved and help carry out the Fates’ will, despite the human’s wishes, and this difference affects the thematic differences because Homer places more of the blame on humans while Sophocles gives humans less power and therefore less responsibility for their actions.
Oedipus' destruction was foretold to his father and mother, Laius and Jocasta, when he was born. It was told to him again when he was a young Corinthian prince, to which he ran from home ("I heard all that and ran" 876). Tiresias tells it to him again during the passage of the Oedipus Rex. The destiny of Oedipus has been laid down, unalterable from the moment he was created. He was fated to marry his mother and kill his father. Phaedra is not controlled by fate. She is possessed by a frivolous deity ("the goddess' anger has landed on your head" p142), stung by her lack of praise and with a grudge against Phaedra's stepson Hippolytus. Thus it is the goddess, Aphrodite, that causes Phaedra to fall in love with the young Athenian prince. The suicide of Phaedra, and her lying words on the note she writes before she dies, brings destruction on the blasphemous Hippolytus, as his father Theseus curses his son. Both characters undeniably have supernatural powers acting upon their destiny. However, it is important to remember that her suicide and the destruction of Hippolytus are not on account of fate. She is under control of the goddess Artemis. Therefore her actions are not directly under her control. Oedipus on the hand has a path laid out by fate ("you were born for pain" 1305). It is a path that has been destined for him all of his life and he is aware of what the gods have set in motion. He is a "man of agony". However, it is Oedipus' fighting of the gods' judgement which brings the destruction. The path might have been laid out but it was Oedipus that walked down it. Oedipus' own innate character flaw (hamartia) of hubris (pride) is his own undoing and without it his fate could not have come to pass. His pride forced him to k...
Here is a story where Oedipus the King, who has accomplished great things in his life, discovers that the gods were only playing with him. He has everything a man of that time could want; he is king of Thebes, he has a wonderful wife and children, and great fame through out the lands. He has lived a good life, but in the end everything is taken from him.