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Examine the character king oedipus in sophocles
Examine the character king oedipus in sophocles
Examine the character king oedipus in sophocles
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Oedipus Rex – Unrealistic or Realistic
Let’s explore the traces of realsim and its opposite in Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus Rex.
The first obvious question is: How can this drama possibly be considered realistic since it relies so heavily on predetermination and fate in the life of the protagonist, Oedipus? As Jocasta recounts to Oedipus:
An oracle
Once came to Laius (I will not say
'Twas from the Delphic god himself, but from
His ministers) declaring he was doomed
To perish by the hand of his own son,
A child that should be born to him by me.
Charles Segal in Oedipus Tyrannus has a solid rebuttal to what appears predestination:
The issues of destiny, predetermination, and foreknowledge are raised as problems, not as dogma. How much control do we have over the shape of our lives? How much of what happens to us is due to heredity, to accidents, to sheer luck. . . . These are the questions that the play raises, and it raises them as questions. It shows us men and women who are both powerful and helpless, often at the same moment. Oedipus embodies the human condition. . . . (75-76).
If this critic is correct that Oedipus embodies the human condition as it really is, then he is totally representative of reality, and not unrealistic as it might appear on first reading. Victor Ehrenberg in “Sophoclean Rulers: Oedipus” analyzes the protagonist of the tragedy and finds a balanced, realistic type who possesses the qualities of a king, including the human, realistic desire for more:
Oedipus is a ‘good king,’ a father of his people, an honest and great ruler, while at the same time an outstanding intellect. . . . He even shares the thro...
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...Sophoclean Rulers: Oedipus.” In Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex, edited by Michael J. O’Brien. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt. England: Penguin Books, 1972.
Segal, Charles. Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993.
“Sophocles” In Literature of the Western World, edited by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. NewYork: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984.
Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Transl. by F. Storr.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-mixed new?tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&part=0&id=SopOedi
Bowra, C. M. “Sophocles’ Use of Mythology.” In Readings on Sophocles, edited by Don Nardo. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1997.
Woodard, Thomas. Introduction. In Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
"Sophocles" In Literature of the Western World, edited by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. NewYork: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984.
Sophocles: A collection of critical essays edited by Thomas Woodward: Oedipus at Colonus. Whitman, Cedric H. Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 1966.
A man whose ideas and perceptions of his time shocked many and he is considered the father of modern philosophy. His views and understanding of the world could be seen to many as radical, as he set out to understand himself and the nature of ideas and existence. His goal in writing the Meditations on First Philosophy written in 1641 was to show the clarity and distinction of ideas through the existence and immortality of God. This man, named Rene Descartes, had to place himself in the shoes of doubt, seen in meditation I. His doubts consisted of the senses in their original distinction such as a square book or a soft blanket and senses in seemingly apparent distinction which Descartes argues about when one dreams. He states that even the most vivid senses in our dreams could be subject to doubt.
“Sophocles” In Literature of the Western World, edited by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. NewYork: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984.
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.
Murray, Robert D. Jr. "Thought and Structure in Sophoclean Tragedy", in Sophocles, A Collection of Critical Essays, Woodward, Thomas, editor,
God’s existence plays a major role in Descartes’ arguments in the Meditations, especially the Third and Fifth Mediations. Throughout this essay I will explore Descartes’ arguments on God’s existence and argue that he is not entitled to use God’s existence in this way due to the fact that his argument is circular and that he felt pressured to prove God’s existence due to personal belief and necessity. Had Descartes not proven the existence of God, he would not have be able to prove that anything else is true in life besides his own existence.
Jaeger, Werner. “Sophocles’ Mastery of Character Development.” In Readings on Sophocles, edited by Don Nardo. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1997.
The 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes believed that God exists. His proof of an all perfect being’s existence was explained by having an idea of God that had to have been caused by God. But simply having an idea of God is not enough for there to necessarily exist such a being. This paper will critically examine Descartes’s causal argument though its premises and conclusion.
...rity and distinction, but we can conclude what Descartes means. He is saying that we can be sure that these primary qualities exist in bodies in the same way that they do in our ideas of bodies. This cannot be claimed for qualities such as heat, color, taste and smell, of which our ideas are so confused and vague that we must always reserve judgment. This can be seen in the wax example.
The ineffaceable impression which Sophocles makes on us today and his imperishable position in the literature of the world are both due to his character-drawing. If we ask which of the men and women ofGreek tragedy have an independent life in the imagination apart from the stage and from the actual plot in which they appear, we must answer, ‘those created by Sophocles, above all others’ (36).
Descartes states that thinking of a god that did not exist would mean imagining God lacking “a supreme perfection” constituting the perfection of existence. If God is the existence of “a supreme perfection,” according to Descartes, then the perfect being, that consists of all possible perfections, must also have the perfection of existence. This argument is the same as his triangle argument, because triangle’s essence is in that it must possess the property of having three sides.
For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together make five and a quadrilateral figure has no more than four sides. It seems impossible that one could ever suspect that such clear truth are false.” He believes that there’s no way these obvious truths are false. Descartes claims that the idea of God has been inside him forever and it must have been put by him in his creator. He begins to question whether God is a deceiver or not, but then again God is always said to be good, so it has to be something else that allows him to be deceived, not God because God doesn’t have any imperfections. Thus the idea of the evil genius is born, that this being is putting a lot of energy in misleading
Oedipus is depicted as a “marionette in the hands of a daemonic power”(pg150), but like all tragic hero’s he fights and struggles against fate even when the odds are against him. His most tragic flaw is his morality, as he struggles between the good and the evil of his life. The good is that he was pitied by the Shepard who saved him from death as a baby. The evil is his fate, where he is to kill his father and marry his mother. His hubris or excessive pride and self-righteousness are the lead causes to his downfall. Oedipus is a tragic hero who suffers the consequences of his immoral actions, and must learn from these mistakes. This Aristotelian theory of tragedy exists today, as an example of what happens when men and women that fall from high positions politically and socially.