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Analyze oedipus the king
Analyze oedipus the king
Interpretation of oedipus the king
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In Oedipus the King, Oedipus continually seeks knowledge regarding his own past and Laius’s murder. Oedipus is warned against investigating as the truth has the potential to destroy him. Despite the cautionary advice, Oedipus uncovers more than he ever imagined. The “power of truth” is revealed and Oedipus learned the hard way that knowledge does not always bring satisfaction. Furthermore, Oedipus’ discoveries lead to the development of a prominent trait that has impacted so many leaders throughout history: pride. As a ruler, Oedipus was conceited and ignorant and believed he could escape his fate. His pride prevented him from rationally considering the best interest for himself and his city. Oedipus the king teaches the limitations
Oedipus can be argued to be a sympathetic ruler of his people, "my heart must bear the strain of sorrow for all." (4). He shows a strong desire to rid the land of its despair. Yet as the reader captures a more in-depth glimpse into Oedipus' soul, we find him to be a jealous, stubborn, "blind", guilty, and sinful man. Oedipus' character outwardly seems to want nothing more than to find the guilty persons involved in the murder of Laius, yet when given obvious clues he turns a blind eye, not wanting to know the truth behind the prophecy.
Oedipus the King conveys many lessons that are relevant to people living today despite the fact that it was written by Sophocles twenty four centuries ago. Oedipus is a child destined to kill his father and marry his mother. During his life, he makes many mistakes trying to avoid his fate. These mistakes teach us about the nature of humans under certain circumstances. Oedipus possesses personality traits which causes him to make wrong decisions. Attributes like arrogance and his inability to make calm decisions in certain scenarios due to his anger causes his downfall. Oedipus’ excessive pride, like many people today, was an important factor that brought him grief. Oedipus’ lack of patience caused him to make hasty decisions which lead him to his greatest agony. Oedipus’ massive ego turned into excessive vanity, this was the first step to his downfall. Oedipus talks to Creon about the murderer of Laius. He declares, “Then I’ll go back and drag that shadowed past to light… but by myself and for myself I’ll break this plague” (Sophocles, 11). Oedipus is saying that he will be the on...
Thesis: The completion and substance of Oedipus Rex allows Oedipus to live grief-stricken throughout his successful search for justice.
Pride caused the death of 2 innocent people in Othello; however, Oedipus becoming blind and having to live with the mistakes he made is a fate worse than death. A tragic flaw seen in both characters is the amount of pride each one possesses. Both men had the opportunity to be ordinary and to be able to get by, yet that was not good enough for either of them. Oedipus and Othello felt they could achieve more than what was put in front of them and in the process of becoming great men; they unfortunately meet their end. It is proven through Oedipus and Othello that pride is not a bad thing when it is used appropriately; however, too much pride can ruin not just one life, but also the many lives that are surrounded by that one life. By putting too much emphasis on their lives, Othello and Oedipus are responsible for their own demise.
In the play Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, a young prince is in search of the truth behind his father¡¦s murder. At first, Hamlet sees the ghost of his deceased father and it tells him he was murdered by the now current king, Hamlet¡¦s Uncle Claudius. Hamlet has to think about how he will get revenge for his fathers death, but because his only knowledge came from a ghost that only Hamlet heard speak, he is hesitant to get his revenge quickly. Hamlet does everything he can to show others the truth he knows. It is important to Hamlet that he gets revenge but he also wants to torment the king and show everyone the truth. Hamlet knows his anger toward his Uncle may cause confusion in his judgement of the truth so he is hesitant to kill him right away. Hamlet second-guesses himself throughout the play only to end up dying, but not before he kills Claudius.
Oedipus’ personality clearly reflects pride and determination throughout the play. When Oedipus heard the oracles’ prediction that he was to kill his father and marry his mother, he was determined to prevent the prophecy. Therefore he left his homeland of Corinth never to return. Then when he solved the Sphinx’s riddle, Oedipus’ pride rose to a new level. He was praised by the people of Thebes, resulting in his marriage to Jocasta, Queen of Thebes. Oedipus also shows his determination when in search of Laius’ murderer. He stated that he would avenge the King’s death as if Laius were his own father. He cursed the murderer, announcing “May he drag out an evil death-in-life in misery.” These characteristics of pride and determination, which Oedipus emanates throughout the play, may appear to be positive attributes to one’s personality. However, Oedipus’ actions, based on these characteristics, are what led him to his eventual downfall and suffrage.
Oedipus tries to uncover the truth about his past, but it is only obscured from his vision by his beliefs, this further demonstrates that he, along with the reader, do not have the ability or knowledge to reveal any infallible answers. An example of this is when Oedipus discovers the fate of King Laius. Oedipus swears to vindicate the cities prior king, saying, “I forbid that man, whoever he be, my land, my land where I hold sovereignty and throne… Upon the murderer I invoke this curse – whether he is one man and all unknown, or one of many – may he wear out his life in misery to miserable doom” (Sophocles 1565). W...
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 is shown to be a well-liked and trusted king among all his townspeople. Solving the riddle of the Sphinx and saving Thebes brought him great fame and popularity. When time came to save the town from Laios’ killer, Oedipus relied much on his intellect. He searched for information about the night of the murder from Creon and Teiresias, but as he learned more details, Oedipus realized not only that he was the killer but also that he married his mother. Throughout his inquiry he believed he was doing good for his people as well as himself, but eventually it brought him shame. Oedipus was humiliated and disgusted and stated, “…kill me; or hurl me into the sea, away from men’s eyes for ever(p882, 183).'; Oedipus’ wanted to be isolated from the people of Thebes because all his respect and fame was destroyed by his fate.
In the play Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Oedipus’s downfall can be interpreted as brought about by his certainty of knowledge. The scholar Bernard Knox expresses that, “these attributes of divinity – knowledge, certainty, justice – are all qualities Oedipus thought he possessed – and that is why he was the perfect example of the inadequacy of human knowledge, certainty, and justice.” Oedipus is first held as the king of kings, and he believed himself to hold the knowledge he needed to act upon, yet this exact confidence led him to curse himself. Oedipus’s unending search for justice shows his commendable qualities, yet this becomes insufficient; as he found the truth, he found his ruin. Even the Messenger and the Herdsman see how Oedipus’s knowledge and certainty blind him from the truth. The attributes of knowledge, certainty, and justice, all of which Oedipus possessed, brought about his downfall by clouding the light of the truth.
Throughout Oedipus the King, by Sophocles, there are many references to sight, blindness, and seeing the truth. Characters, such as Tiresias, are able to accurately predict what Oedipus’ fate will be through their power to see the truth in a situation. Oedipus maintains a pompous and arrogant personality throughout the play as he tries to keep control of the city of Thebes and prove the speculations about his fate as falsities. Ironically, although Tiresias is physically blind, he is able to correctly predict how Oedipus’ backstory will unfold, while other characters, such as Jocasta and Oedipus are oblivious to the truth even though they can physically see. Thus, we can conclude that the power of “seeing the truth” deviates greatly from the power of sight in reality and can lead to an expedited fate or a detrimental occurrence.
The last example of when Oedipus’ pride gets the better of him was when he is demanding that the messenger tell him all he knows about who his real parents are. Again the messenger is trying to tell him that things would be better left untold, but Oedipus has to keep going on and on and find out. Finally the messenger tells him that Polybus is not his father, already Jocasta has figured out that she is his mother. Oedipus asks the messenger who his real parents are. Jocasta is begging Oedipus to pay no attention to the messenger and tells Oedipus, “Never find out who you are';(1073). Oedipus, of course, goes on ahead anyway and sends for the shepherd who know where Oedipus came from. Once again Oedipus pride got in the way.
Not only does ignorance have a negative impact on people, it is also “the root and stem of all evil” (Plato), which can destroy a person. To start off, self-superiority can cloud a person’s judgment; making it evident that intelligence can easily be lost to arrogance. To add on, anger and the human tendency to make rash decisions can also contribute to ignorance, resulting in eventual downfall. Lastly, unconscious attempts to blind yourself from the truth can result in the committing of major sins. Tragedy occurs in “Oedipus the King” when ignorance causes disastrous events, proving that lack of knowledge can result in their misfortune.
The myth of Oedipus is one of a man brought down by forces aligning against him. Over the years, different playwrights have interpreted his character in various fashions. In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus is a man who is blind to the path on which his questions take him and exemplifies the typical tyrannical leader in ancient times; in Senaca’s Oedipus, it is the fear of his questions that give Oedipus a greater depth of character, a depth he must overcome if he is to survive his ordeal.
Oedipus was willing to die to uncover the truth. Closure was needed for Oedipus the individual and Oedipus the king. Despite this need for closure, Oedipus remained blind to the clues in his path, plainly dismissing the ideas of other characters. Oedipus’ passion for knowledge was at least as strong as his blindness to the clues in his path. This blindness can be attributed to his pride. This pride gradually developed from h...