Oedipus And Othello Research Paper

The Obscured Vision

The tragic hero's Oedipus and Othello share a lot of the qualities that lead to their downfall. This paper is meant to convey to the reader the personality characteristics that made Oedipus and Othello's life paths lead astray. Both Character's had people that helped them and people that hindered them. In this paper we will cover both of the character's axis and allies that helped them and hindered them eventually leading to their descent. Ultimately it was the Character's way of looking at the given situation that led to an unforgiving fate.

Oedipus and Othello are both leaders and at the top of the food chain, this leads them to never want to showing any sign of weakness. Pride is so strong in each one of the main character's that neither of them can even think to do anything else but to hide so much of what is going on inside that this eventually leads to self-destruction in the end. Oedipus is focused on what is wrong he cannot see what is right and so goes along the same lines as Othello. They both want answers, one wants justification for a past death and the other wants his marriage to be justified for.

On their path to

destruction they let other people lead them astray without asking questions or questioning themselves. This is a by-product of pride in a sense, when Oedipus goes to the shepherd to question him about the birth of him the shepherd does not want to tell him, Oedipus is very forceful and threatens the shepherd with death to find that he his the son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta. Oedipus could not just let it go, it was his pride and need for self respect that got in the way. When Othello believed Lago over his own wife's pleas that was was also a by-product of pride.

On the island of cypress Othello accuses Desdemona of cheating on him with Cassio. Desdemona pleas with Othello, stating her innocence over and over again. He will not listen to her bargaining and states:

By heaven, I saw my handkerchief in 's hand.

O perjured woman! Thou doust stone° my heart,

And makes me call what I intend to do

A murder, which I thought a sacrifice.

I saw the handkerchief." -Othello Act V Scene II lines 66-69

In Othello some of the characters in the play that tried to lead the tragic hero's to success.

What made Othello and Oedipus have so much pride? What makes anyone have pride, we should look how they were raised and their positions in life. Othello is the moor of Venice and soldier, he is well respected by all those who know him. Oedipus came from humble beginnings and rose up to become the King of Thebes. Both of them feel like they have something to fight for, something to look out for and instead of looking inside oneself they looked to the outside to see what was wrong with their lives and the livelihood of the people around them. Often times men have more pride then women, men are told that showing emotions is a sign of weakness, giving them a feminine quality to their peers. (AuthorLastName

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What was wrong with Oedipus killing his Father and marrying his mother if he did not know what he was doing? According to Sigmund Freud:

"Oedipus' fate" he says, "moves us because only because it might have been our own, because the oracle laid upon us before birth is the very curse which rested upon him. It may be that we were all destined to direct our first sexual impulses toward our mothers, and our first impulses of hatred towards our fathers; our dreams convince us that we were."

Othello let his poor judgment lead to jealousy and ultimately the demise of his true love and

The tragic heroes Oedipus and Othello were great people, both had fallen victim to circumstance and a series of unfortunate events. We learned from these tragic heroes that pride and the inability to see the true underlying issue will lead to blindness of the soul. Their journey's are a lot like ours, for most of us everyday is a chance to see what is truly there. There will always be the disbeliever's, and people that will try to break us down. It is our decision to decide what is good or evil.