Similarities Between Oedipus Rex And Othello

Most characters that appear in tragedies have one common similarity. This is that they all have a tragic flaw that leads to their downfall in the end. This tragic flaw can be many different things such as greed or anger issues, but the two most common are hubris, or excessive pride, and jealousy. In Oedipus Rex and Othello, we can see major examples of these two tragic flaws, plus a little bit of greed from a secondary character in Othello. This shows that tragedies typically follow the same storyline. Of course this is not meant as actually the same story. Basically these stories contain someone who has a lot of power or high social status with a tragic flaw that leads to their death or loss of power. That statement alone describes both Oedipus

Rex and Othello. Therefore, the two tragedies reinforce one another in this way.
Oedipus Rex is a tragedy written by Sophocles. The story starts out with the people of Thebes devastated by a horrible plague. They go to their king, Oedipus, to see if he will take action to fix the problem. He informs them that his brother in law, Creon, is going to the oracle at Delphi to find out what the city must do to rid of the plague. When Creon returns, he tells the people that as soon as the murderer of Laius, the former king of Thebes, is expelled from the city, the plague will end. Oedipus says that he will find the murderer of Laius and punish him. Throughout the play, he slowly starts to realize that he is the murderer. He tries to refute this by saying that his father is Polybus, king of Corinth. Therefore, he could not have killed Laius because the prophecy was that Laius would be killed by his own son. This is the same prophecy that said Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother.

Later on, he finds out that he is the son of Laius, and he actually did kill him. He then blinds himself, is stripped of his title, and is exiled (Sophocles). There is irony shown throughout this entire play. First of all, the most obvious sight of irony is the fact that Oedipus wants to have the murderer of Laius put to death, but he in fact is the murderer. This is verbal irony because he is saying to get rid of the murderer, but that is himself. He of course does not want to banish himself. This is the basis for the entire play. The other piece of irony that we see is the fact that he is blind to the truth of being the murderer, and then later on he literally blinds himself. This is also tied in with the fact that he is cruel to Tiresias because he is blind, but Oedipus is also blind but in a different way (Dems).

Othello is a story written by William Shakespeare. This tragedy includes a military man, Othello, who fell in love with the senator’s daughter, Desdemona. The senator, Brabantio, gets very upset but lets it go and disowns his daughter. He tells Othello that he better be careful because Desdemona betrayed her father, so it is possible that she will betray Othello. Othello is

sent to Cyprus to do some work for the army, and Desdemona is allowed to go with him. The two start off okay until the villain of the story, Iago, gets involved. Iago is angry with Othello because he gave a promotion to a man named Cassio rather that himself. Iago decides that he will do anything in his power to destroy Othello’s life, and he does not care who gets hurt along the way. He uses a man named Roderigo to help his plan, but Roderigo thinks that Iago is helping him. Iago gets Cassio drunk one night while he is on watch. He then tells Roderigo to make Cassio angry so that he will start a fight and get demoted. This is exactly what happened, which pleased Iago. Iago then gets Cassio to give his plea to Desdemona so she would try to get Othello to forgive Cassio. This works out as planned as well. Before Desdemona can talk to Othello, Iago tells Othello that he is suspicious about Desdemona and Cassio having an affair. Othello becomes suspicious soon after. One thing leads to another, and Oedipus seems to find more reasons to believe Iago. The two become “blood brothers” and decide to kill both Cassio and Desdemona. Othello smothers Desdemona even though she tries to tell him that she has not been unfaithful. Emilia, Iago’s wife, comes in just a minute too late to save Desdemona, but she explains what happened to Othello. Iago comes in and gets angry that Emilia is interfering, and he and Othello fight because Othello now knows the truth. Iago stabs Emilia, who dies next to Desdemona. Cassio gives Othello a knife to put himself out of his misery, and Othello kills himself. Iago is then killed. Cassio is then promoted to Othello’s position to take over the troops in Cyprus (Shakespeare). One of the most ironic things in this whole play is that everybody tends to call Iago “honest Iago,” which we all know is not true. This is just simple verbal irony, but it has a big impact. Almost everybody in this play was deceived by Iago in some way. The other thing that is ironic is the fact that Desdemona was innocent, but Othello was absolutely convinced that she was having an affair. This shows that Desdemona was very innocent (maybe too innocent) because she could not possibly understand why Othello thought so badly of her (Dramatic Irony in Shakespeare’s Othello). We can also see a tragic flaw in Iago, even though he is not the tragic hero of the story. Everything that happens in this play is caused by Iago because of his greed. He wants to destroy Othello’s life because he is greedy for power, and he is angry that he did not get the promotion.
How do these two plays and their ironies relate?

They were both caused by the same thing, which was a tragic character flaw. Oedipus was full of hubris. He was so proud, and he thought there was no possible way that it was his own fault. His pride was also partly because of the fact that he solved the riddle to get rid of the last plague, and this is why he became king. The people loved him so much after that. However, Othello’s tragic flaw was his raging jealousy. This was such a problem that he actually killed the girl that he was in love with because of his jealousy. He was also very gullible. He barely needed any convincing from Iago to become suspicious of his own wife. To make the two even more closely related, Othello also suffered from hubris. This ties in with killing his wife. He felt the need to kill her because his pride was hurt by her “affair.” He did not want to be made to be a fool, so he killed her. Therefore, both of these stories include ironies that are caused by a tragic flaw in the main characters. This means that the ironies in Oedipus Rex and Othello reinforce each other by teaching the audience to not be proud or jealous. These are both common flaws that almost everybody deals with, but if we let them get out of hand, we could end up like Othello or

Oedipus.
Overall, irony is very prominent in both of these plays and many other plays, television shows, and movies. We can see that a lot of writers all the way from the time of Sophocles to the time of Shakespeare use irony as a main component of their work, especially if the work is a tragedy. Irony is not only a device used in tragedy, but tragedy is one genre that uses irony in a similar way every time. This irony in tragedies is caused by similar flaws in the main characters such as jealousy, anger, greed, pride, or a combination of these. This technique of writing has been used all the way to the writers of today, and all of these works reinforce each other by teaching us the same basic principle- do not be proud.