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Oedipus tragic fault
Oedipus and guilt
Role of tiresias in oedipus the king
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Greeks during ancient times, had trust in the oracles. Tiresias, the wise, old fortune teller, strongly influenced the outcome of the play. He became one of the key contributors of the main protagonist’s downfall. In addition, he predicted Oedipus fate and established a further reality in which the king could not see due to his blind actions. At the end of the story, it raises a question whether Oedipus is guilty or cannot be blamed for it since it was chosen by destiny. However, a crime cannot be an act of innocence, whether or not one has the power to envision it, justice needs to enforced. Killing his father and marrying a mother was sought out to be Oedipus true fate in the story. Teiresisas explains this when he is first introduced. He
explains how he once knew his parents. “A fool? Your parents thought me sane enough” (Sophocles 23). Oedipus in this feud wants to know who gave birth to him. However, he would not submit to the king’s rage. He calls him crazy and threatens the oracle to be banned. Unfortunately as planned, he commited the crime and scrutinized himself because of it. He is convicted of incest as well as murderer which shocked a numerous amount of readers. A plot twist many sought to be corrupted and unusual came to life. The play comes to an end once the main character Oedipus realizes he is guilty for his actions. In addition, he does not even remember until the location and specific information was brought into the picture. His unconscious motives cannot influence a different consequence for killing an innocent person as perceived in the book. Due to the fact he ended not just his life , but massacred the people who were there to protect Laios. Innocence cannot be compared when one takes someone’s own life. An act as much as that should never be forgiven and death should be the only punishment to resolve the issue.
The selfishness that Oedipus possesses causes him to have abundance of ignorance. This combination is what leads to his father’s death. After fleeing Corinth and his foster family, Oedipus gets into a skirmish with an older man. The reason for the fight was because, “The groom leading the horses forced me off the road at his lord’s command” (1336). Oedipus is filled with a rage after being insulted by the lord and feels the need to act. The two men fight, but Oedipus ends up being too much for the older man, and he kills him. What Oedipus is unaware of is that the man was actually his birth father and by killing him, Oedipus has started on the path of his own destruction. Not only does Oedipus kill his father, but also everyone else, “I killed them all” (1336). The other men had no part in the scuffle, but in his rage, he did not care who he was killing.
He murders his father and marries his mother unknowingly. While it may seem to some that Oedipus was destined to carry out his fate, it is also true that Oedipus’ personality led him to his fate. It is clear to see that Oedipus is an impulsive and passionate man, which causes Oedipus to fulfill the prophecy that haunts him. He flees the kingdom of Corinthian in order to avoid his fate. Along his journey he comes to a crossroad that is blocked by a chariot, and “in a fit of anger” Oedipus kills the father he never knew (Meyer 1422).
Many times in life, people think they can determine their own destiny, but, as the Greeks believe, people cannot change fate the gods set. Though people cannot change their fate, they can take responsibility for what fate has brought them. In the story Oedipus, by Sophocles, a young king named Oedipus discovers his dreadful fate. With this fate, he must take responsibility and accept the harsh realities of what’s to come. Oedipus is a very hubris character with good intentions, but because he is too confident, he suffers. In the story, the city of Thebes is in great turmoil due to the death of the previous king, Laius. With the thought of helping his people, Oedipus opens an investigation of King Laius’s murder, and to solve the mystery, he seeks advice from Tiresias, a blind prophet. When Laius comes, Oedipus insists on having the oracle told to all of Thebes showing no sign of hesitation or caution. This oracle states that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus must learn to deal with his terrible and appalling fate the way a true and honorable king would. Because...
"Innocent until proven guilty", this expression seems very simple to understand, once proven guilty, innocence is entirely out of the picture. However, proving that an individual is guilty is not always an easy task. There are many factors to look upon and review before making a final statement or decision, many laws that may annul the fact that someone is guilty. Sophocles' "Oedipus Tyrannus" is a perfect example of how difficult it is to prove that someone is guilty, or to prove that someone is innocent for that matter. Oedipus is accused of many crimes for which he may or may not be guilty of. It is my contention that Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is guiltless of his -so called- crimes. For the crime of patricide, it was inevitable and is not really considered patricide. What others call adultery or incest could not of occurred, for none of the two involved knew what they were getting into. Perhaps we should look to blame other characters in the play for the criminal acts committed, like Jocasta for example.
The play "Oedipus Rex" is a very full and lively one to say the least. Everything a reader could ask for is included in this play. There is excitement, suspense, happiness, sorrow, and much more. Truth is the main theme of the play. Oedipus cannot accept the truth as it comes to him or even where it comes from. He is blinded in his own life, trying to ignore the truth of his life. Oedipus will find out that truth is rock solid. The story is mainly about a young man named Oedipus who is trying to find out more knowledge than he can handle. The story starts off by telling us that Oedipus has seen his moira, his fate, and finds out that in the future he will end up killing his father and marrying his mother. Thinking that his mother and father were Polybos and Merope, the only parents he knew, he ran away from home and went far away so he could change his fate and not end up harming his family. Oedipus will later find out that he cannot change fate because he has no control over it, only the God's can control what happens. Oedipus is a very healthy person with a strong willed mind who will never give up until he gets what he wants. Unfortunately, in this story these will not be good trait to have.
Oedipus, ruler of Thebes, murdered his father and married his mother. Such acts are almost always deemed unnatural and criminal; they are not tolerated within traditional society. A person who has committed these acts of murder and incest would be considered an outcast, yet Sophocles’s character, Oedipus, is not guilty of either.
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...
Justice in Oedipus the King & nbsp; After reading Oedipus the King, one may think that in this story, there was no justice, and nobody could avoid their fate. King Laius and Queen Jocasta. fearing the prophecy of the Delphic oracle, had the young Oedipus left on Mount. Cithaeron dies, but the father dies and the son marries the mother anyway. Oedipus, seemingly a good person, also tries to avoid the second prophecy, only to be resurrected. to fulfill the first. But even through all this, I have done some research and feel that there was justice in Oedipus, The King, and their fate wasn't.
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.
In Oedipus the King, Sophocles suggests that the impact of seeing the truth is harmful rather than enlightening. Whenever Oedipus strives to discover more to strengthen Thebes’ perspective of him, it leads him closer to his fate as determined by prophesy. Tiresias stands as a model in the play for the individual who is able to see the meaning beyond plot of events although his is blind, and Oedipus represents the oblivious arrogant individual who is never content because they need to be the unsurpassed individual. In the play, Sophocles illustrates the downside of a personality like Oedipus who desires to see the truth by ending the play with the brutality of gouging out his own eyes. Ultimately, the play reinforces that seeing the truth is harmful and being content with what you have, without greedily striving for more, can help avoid fate and a related deposition.
When Oedipus was born he was taken to an Oracle, this was custom for the rich. The Oracle was to tell his fate. The Oracle said that when Oedipus grows up he will marry his mother and he would also kill his father, "... Why, Loxias declared that I should one day marry my own mother, And with my own hands shed my father's bool. Wherefore Corinth I have kept away far, for long years; and prosperd; none the less it is most sweet to see one's parents' face..."(p36 ln1-6). When his parents herd this they gave Oedipus to a man and he was to get rid of the baby by leaving it in the forest, but an servant of Polybus, the king of Corinth, finds the baby and brings him to the king. The king falls in love with the baby and takes him in as one of his own.
In perhaps one of the most well known stories in the Western world, Oedipus the King, innocence and guilt are two of the most discussed aspects. The implications surrounding the guilt or innocence of Oedipus can not only be applied to this play, but to almost all stories told throughout the Western tradition. Within Oedipus the King, no one character carries the guilt of the events in the play, rather it is a culmination of humans trying to avoid their fate that create a paradox of individuals who are all at once guilty and innocent, with the different acts of individuals ultimately bringing about the fate that Oedipus suffers.
Oedipus Rex is a novel who responds to injustice because Oedipus did something wrong, he committed a murder. At Thebes he was the king and everyone look at him like a brave and honest person. Oedipus did committe something bad but he was actually a nice person.
Oedipus Innocent or Guilty In Oedipus Rex Sophocles expresses that it is possible to see but still be blind by having oedipus try to get around his fate, but by doing so he walks right into it. Oedipus rex was a tragedy written by Sophocles, a Greek playwright. In Oedipus Rex the main character, Oedipus is trying to avoid his fate “That i was doomed to marry with my mother/and shed my father’s blood with these my hands.” (961-62) . The problem is Oedipus does not know the truth about himself because he does not know who his real family is.
Poor Oedipus discovers that he had killed his father and married his mother at the climax of the play when the Shepard is questioned. He states "I stand revealed at last - cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands!"³ He then finds his mother after she has committed suicide and proceeds to gouge out his own eyes with her brooches.