Oedipus the King is Indeed a Tragic Hero
The downfall of a hero follows from his very nature. In Sophocles
play, Oedipus the King, the playwright focuses on a man named Oedipus, the king of Thebes,
who is trying to discover the truth about his past. When he was born, his
parents learned from an oracle that their child would someday be the cause
of their death. Believing the oracle, they abandoned their infant son with
the intention of killing him. However, without their knowledge he is
rescued and raised by another couple. After many years, Oedipus visits a
different oracle and is informed that one day he will kill his father and
sleep with his mother. He flees his home for fear that he is a danger to
his parents safety. The frightened Oedipus travels to Thebes, but on the
journey he becomes engaged in a quarrel. He kills King Laios and Laios' men
not realizing that the king is his biological father. Af ter reaching
Thebes he becomes the new king by solving a riddle and lifting a plaque
from the city. Oedipus quickly marries a woman named Iocaste, the queen,
and together they have four children. In Thebes the murder of the old King
Laios remains unknown, a plaque is again placed upon the city by the gods.
Oedipus, being the new leader of Thebes, pledges to discover the identity
of the murderer so he can end the disaster. In his searching, Oedipus
discovers that he is the murderer of the king and eventually discovers that
Iocaste is really his own mother. In a Greek tragedy the hero is a
character amply capable of choices, capable, too of accepting the
...
... middle of paper ...
... himself by self-blinding. The audience is left with
feelings of pity and fear. Oedipus does not curse God and die though, he
does eventually accept his fate, prays for blessings upon his children, and
prepares to endure his own exile. He falls from a high estate, but is
uplifted in moral dignity.
Anger, overconfidence, pride and frustration misguided Oedipus to
think he was in control of his own life. He is ultimately in control of
his own downfall. He is responsible for the consequences of his choices.
Even the greatest of men can crumble to ruins. All human are subject to
suffering and pain.
Oedipus the King reprinted in X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia,
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, 6th ed. New York,
NY 1995.
He continually shows his inability to accept blame and fully believes his problems are a result of another person’s actions, with the first person possibly being the one who gave him his name. He was very rebellious and would not listen or cooperate with anyone. An example of this was his mother's concern over what was becoming of him and her decision to take him to church. “When he saw the big lighted church, he jerked out of his grasp and ran”. It was clear his mother had lost all control of him at this time.
As the salespeople’s immediate supervisor, it is the primary responsibility of the manager to provide proper training to enhance the salespersons’ effectiveness and improve their skills. Given the importance of having a productive and enthusiastic sales team, the manager needs to develop and manage effective reward and compensation packages to ensure a highly motivated and satisfied sales force. Sales managers also ensure that the company 's standards of professionalism, image, and branding are consistent with the sales team’s interaction with company customers. The manager 's presence also makes customers feel valued as well as provide credibility on behalf of the company (Pilling, Donthu, & Henson,
1. In 1992, the microprocessor industry was highly competitive. In this type of knowledge industry, the costs of design, development, and production costs were rising at a rapid pace. Although Intel had gained a substantial market share by consistently innovating and creating new products, imitations were becoming an enormous problem. Competitors were able to imitate Intel’s products with much lower production costs because they were able to skip expensive product life-cycle phases, such as development and marketing. Skipping these phases also allowed competitors to adapt the product features to more recent changes in demand. Yet another threat in the industry arose from a growing number of companies developing CPU’s that did not attempt compatibility with Intel products. In order to strengthen its competitive position, it is important that Intel continue to legally defend its intellectual property rights in order to reduce competition from imitators. Intel also must continue to aggressively spend on R&D, equipment and fabs to strengthen its process technology and production capacity.
Tragedy; it’s inevitable. In life, everyone is bound to experience a rough time. These rough times and flaws are what test a hero and build character. Someone experiencing hard times transforms an average person and his mistakes into something remarkable and heroic. What characteristics make a him a tragic hero rather than just an ordinary person? A hero is a person who is admired for courageous acts, noble qualities and outstanding achievements. Despite possessing the same qualities as an ordinary hero, a tragic hero, who is born a noble birth and usually male, has a fatal flaw that ultimately leads to his ruin. The hero 's flaws can range vastly. Tragically, however, the flaws possessed with eventually ruin the person 's reputation and also
Throught Oedipus Rex, Oedipus displays his heroism many times. From the Prologue of the play to the moment in which he leaves Thebes, Oedipus' heroics are extremely apparent; however, at the same time, the decisions which make Oedipus a hero ultimately become the decisions which bring him to shame and exile.
The ancient Greeks were fond believers of Fate. Fate, defined according to Webster’s, is “the principle or determining cause or will by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as the do.” The Greeks take on Fate was slightly modified. They believed that the gods determined Fate: “…fate, to which in a mysterious way the gods themselves were subject, was an impersonal force decreeing ultimate things only, and unconcerned with day by day affairs.” It was thought that these gods worked in subtle ways; this accounts for character flaws (called harmatia in Greek). Ancient Greeks thought the gods would alter a person’s character, in order for that person to suffer (or gain from) the appropriate outcome. Such was the case in Oedipus’s story.
Oedipus is widely known for being the man that killed his father and married his mother. After Oedipus finds out about what he has done he proceeds to jab both of his eyes out and remains blind for the rest of his life. By Oedipus doing this it means that his fate that was told to his parents at the beginning of the story had come true. With Oedipus jabbing his eyes out, this made it clear that this was a tragedy. Oedipus is the perfect fit of being a tragic hero. First of all by being born into royalty and throughout his life he held a royal persona. Also he makes some choices that leads him to his own destruction. For example, with him already marrying his mother and his mother had already had several of his kids their was nothing that he could do when he found out that his wife was also his mother. In the story as he went back to confront his mother/wife, she had already hung herself. As for being a hero, he done many heroic things throughout his life. For example, when he arrived at the city where he met his mother and father, there
Although Nardelli brought his previous knowledge to the company, when it came down to the employees there weren’t too many that remained happy. The numbers were most important to Nardelli, “Nardelli’s data-driven in your face management style grated on many seasoned executives, resulting in massive turnover in Home Depot’s upper ranks” (Grow, et al., 2007). Nardelli wasn’t willing to change the process of how Home Depot was operating once he became the
Intel's business grew a bit in the years to come as it got bigger and made improvements on the way that products were made, and produced a wider range/variety of those products. Even though Intel created the first publically available processor (Intel...
The demand for memory chips was insatiated. All products had successful launch and carried premium pricing.
It is difficult when acquiring intangibles, such as intellectual capital, to motivate employees of the target to stay on post-merger. Employees of the target may feel alienated or threatene...
Voluntary and involuntary turnover have an effect on organizations. Rapid changes in job descriptions, organizational structures, and inter-organizational competitiveness increase the importance of studying turnover and its relationship with organizational change. According to Leana and Van Buren (1999), "the loss of key network members can severely damage an organization 's social fabric and perhaps eradicate its social capital altogether." When businesses lose a high number of employees, problems can occur, costing the company time and money. Some of the costs incurred are associated with training, drug testing, physicals, and orientations to hire replacements that may take several months to learn the job and to achieve competency. There is a saying, “Good help is hard to find---and harder to keep”. This saying refers to good organizations trying to reduce turnover when the competition for retaining good employees is intense.
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.
Oedipus the King is an excellent example of Aristotle's theory of tragedy. The play has the perfect Aristotelian tragic plot consisting of paripeteia, anagnorisis and catastrophe; it has the perfect tragic character that suffers from happiness to misery due to hamartia (tragic flaw) and the play evokes pity and fear that produces the tragic effect, catharsis (a purging of emotion).
According to Aristotle's theory of tragedy and his definition of the central character, Oedipus the hero of Sophocles is considered a classical model of the tragic hero. The tragic hero of a tragedy is essential element to arouse pity and fear of the audience to achieve the emotional purgation or catharathis. Therefore, this character must have some features or characteristics this state of purgation. In fact, Oedipus as a character has all the features of the tragic hero as demanded by Aristotle.