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Discuss the theme of the play Oedipus Rex
How did oedipus contribute to his own fate
Oedipus Rex characterization
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Recommended: Discuss the theme of the play Oedipus Rex
Throughout the play Oedipus Rex the King, Oedipus protects his pride by trying to make everyone see that he is in every way perfect, but it affects many more people than just himself. Oedipus protecting ‘morality’ has a trickle down effect. Oedipus’ actions affect everyone from his loyal subjects to both of his mother 's, Jocasta and Merope. If someone was to look at Oedipus’ life chronologically then they would see that Oedipus starts trying to protect his pride as a young man and continues even when he has no pride to hold on to, other than to just do what he said he was going to do. The first example of Oedipus doing what he can to protect his integrity is when he found out that he was supposed to kill his father and marry his mother. …show more content…
When he encountered these travels their interactions ended with Oedipus killing the travelers. When he made his way into the town closes, Thebes, he encountered a Sphinx and solves the riddle no one could solve. Oedipus becomes the new King of Thebes because the old King of Thebes had recently died. Having been recently filled with the pride of solving the Sphinx riddle and having just become king, Oedipus does not tell anyone that he had killed the travelers because he would have been shamed for killing innocent men. “Jocasta, I will tell you the whole truth. When I was near the branching of the crossroads, going on foot, I was encountered by a herald and a carriage with a man in it, just as you tell me… I became angry and struck the coachman who was pushing me… my stick had struck him backwards from the car and he rolled out of it. And then I killed them all… I pollute the bed of him I killed by the hands that killed him” (933-956). Oedipus affects these ‘travelers’ in quite a bad way because he kills them. Though Oedipus did not know at the time, he was killing King Laius. Therefore, Oedipus also negatively affect King Laius. This, in turn, affects Jocasta because King Laius was her husband. Meaning Oedipus killed Jocasta’s husband. Oedipus killing King Laius also positively affected Jocasta. King Laius being dead meant that Jocasta needed a new husband. Oedipus was there to fill this …show more content…
The Oracle told him that he was the killer, that he was married to his mother, and that he was going to die blind and alone. Oedipus was offended and confused. Oedipus was confused because he did not believe the Oracle. Oedipus assumed that Creon and Teiresias were trying to overthrow him and take the kingdom for themselves. Oedipus would not let them shame him, but Oedipus calmed down and his search for the killer continued. “And now you would expel me, because you think that you will find a place by Creon’s throne. I think you will be sorry, both you and your accomplice, for your plot to drive me out. And did I not regard you as an old man, some suffering would have taught you that what was in your heart was treason” (463-470). The Oracle and Creon and in Oedipus’ journey throughout the play. Oedipus positively influences the Oracle. In that Oedipus, at the end of the play, proves the Oracle correct. Even after Oedipus himself slandered the Oracles name and reputation just because he did not want to believe that he could in fact be sleeping with his birth mother and have killed his birth father. Oedipus affects Creon in both a negative way and a positive way. The positive way being that Oedipus has a good and trustworthy relationship with Creon, until dout is planted in his mind by the Oracle. Creon was always there for Oedipus and Oedipus greatly respected Creon. The Negative being that, once the doubt
I found out that he is not only an artist, but an author as well. He uses his artistic ability to express his political views. The painting below is about a man struggling with life and the depths of despair falls to his knees asking for an audience with God. He left his country due to one night, solider bombarded into his home and ransacked everything in the middle night for no reasons (King, 2001). It’s a country run by dictatorship, fear, killing and extremist (King, 2001). Like other artist, he uses his art to express the pain that many of his people endure brought upon by those in his own culture. So, oppression does not have to come from others outside your race or other ethnicity, but your own as well.
As Oedipus himself describes it, Creon comes “not to take [Oedipus] home, but to dump me out on the frontier to protect Thebes from fighting a war against Athens” (Oedipus at Colonus, 783-786). Creon seeks not to help Oedipus as he claims, but to use his divine power with no regard for Oedipus’s peace or happiness. It’s impossible to be sure whether Creon would have been more genuine had Oedipus not thrown Creon under the bus himself, but it seems that way to me. More importantly, Oedipus prolongs the curse that afflicts the city as the murderer remains unexposed. This works directly against Oedipus, because he is responsible for Thebes’s well-being. By pridefully insisting he could have nothing to do with Laius’s death, despite knowing that he had killed several unidentified people, he neglects his city and lets it suffer. Socrates would have Oedipus search his life for wrongdoing and immorality, but he instead chooses to shove blame onto others, and it’s clear from the events mentioned above that he only postpones the consequences of guilt, and makes them worse to
The selfishness that Oedipus possesses causes him to have abundance of ignorance. This combination is what leads to his father’s death. After fleeing Corinth and his foster family, Oedipus gets into a skirmish with an older man. The reason for the fight was because, “The groom leading the horses forced me off the road at his lord’s command” (1336). Oedipus is filled with a rage after being insulted by the lord and feels the need to act. The two men fight, but Oedipus ends up being too much for the older man, and he kills him. What Oedipus is unaware of is that the man was actually his birth father and by killing him, Oedipus has started on the path of his own destruction. Not only does Oedipus kill his father, but also everyone else, “I killed them all” (1336). The other men had no part in the scuffle, but in his rage, he did not care who he was killing.
Oedipus the King: Reason and Passion In the play, Oedipus the King, there are dual parts of reason and passion. Oedipus primarily acts with both reason and passion at different stages in the play. There are several points in the play where Oedipus acts with reason. The first such point occurs when he is asked by his followers to help save Thebes. He acts with reason when he immediately decides to heed to their demands and find help for them.
Ironically, he initially became a King by solving a riddle and now he is trying to solve another to try and maintain his image and control his destiny. “Human happiness is built on an illusion” (Dodds 27). This quote is a good connection to the role of Oedipus, because while attempting to keep the Kingdom under control and keep his image unharmed, he is left in the dark by ignoring the signs. The irony of ignoring the past continues when “Creon brings the information that there will be no relief until the murderer of Laius is expelled from the city… [And] the murder mystery slowly becomes a quest for Oedipus ' identity” (Derrida). Building upon the investigation, Oedipus grows a keen interest for who he truly is. Is there any truth to the prophecies that which he and Jocasta have seemingly forgot about? At this point, it seems as though Oedipus must finally face his fear and discover the truth that he has been avoiding for so long. The only way for Oedipus to find out the lies he has been living is to seek for the only witness of his father’s murder, a shepherd. Only until Oedipus threatens to kill the shepherd does he tell the truth and reveal the tragic events which have been avoided for so long. In this moment before certainty of the past is brought to light, the relationship between self-control and self-image is linked and soon to be changed
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 demonstrates that he is not a purely evil character by fleeing his home town for safety of others, taking care of his city and accepting responsibility for his actions. Once Oedipus has grown to be a young man he is told that he is to kill his father and sleep with his mother because it is his fate. As a result “I [Oedipus] herd and fled” to Thebes so he can prevent those actions from occurring (822). Oedipus runs away from his fate to help himself out as well as his family. He does not want to kill his father; therefore, he runs away from his fate for the safety of his father.
In “Oedipus the King”, Oedipus is a brash and arrogant ruler while Creon is his patient, thoughtful right hand man. After Oedipus and his sons all die and Creon becomes king of Thebes, he begins to grow wilder and even more out of control than Oedipus was. In “Oedipus the King” Oedipus accused Creon of bribing Tiresias, the blind prophet, to make a prediction that will doom Oedipus. He accuses Creon of “plotting to kill the king” (189). He does this without any concrete evidence or proof. Oedipus rationalizes that because Creon induced him to “send for that sanctimonious prophet [Tiresias]” (190), he is responsible for the prophecy. Oedipus assumes that “if the two of you [Creon and Tiresias] had never put heads together, we would never have heard” (192) the prophecy. Creon even calls Oedipus a man is full of “crude, mindless stubbornness” (190). Oedipus lashed out at Creon for “betraying a kinsman” (192). He did so without any evidence or proof. He just did accused Creon without thinking about the consequences. Although Creon stands against rashness and unthinking now, he soon becomes another Oedipus. ...
Even though Oedipus may be the hero, he is also selfish and ruthless. One example of his ruthlessness is when he meets Laius at the place where the three roads meet. Instead of letting the older man pass, he makes a scene, why should he be the one to move? He is royalty. He believes that he should move for no man. He is also selfish in the fact that when Teresias enters and gives Oedipus the clues that tell him that he has killed Laius, he refuses to believe him, to the point of insulting him, and kicking him out.
Sleeping with your mother, killing your father, watching your only son commit suicide, and gouging your own eyes out are only a few results of Oedipus and Creon’s flaws. In the books Oedipus The King and Antigone, written by Sophocles, the characters Creon and Oedipus meet horrific fates. During Oedipus The King, Oedipus becomes the king of Thebes but is ignorant to the fact that he is the son of Laius and Jocasta. In Antigone, Creon refuses to bury the former king Polyneices because he attacked Thebes. During these books Oedipus and Creon’s flaws result in the destruction of their lives.
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.
Although Oedipus appears to have many "flaws" on the surface, namely his poor temperament, carelessness, curiosity and pride, close examination of the text reveals that he has many seemingly flawed characteristics that are not only justifiable but in some cases to be expected. One might expect that a quick and even murderous temper would be considered a serious impediment to Oedipus. However, he is quite justified in his rage against Creon and Tiresias, and he has good reasons to suspect them of plotting against him. From the view point of Oedipus, he has just discovered that the antecedent king Laius was savagely murdered along with the members of his entourage. Furthermore the murder has yet to be solved many years later, and the gods have placed a plague on his city until the murderer(s) is apprehended and punished.
Oedipus situation relates into Shakespeare quote “Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven”. Oedipus is an impulsive and passionate man, which leads him to fulfill the prophecy that has haunts him since birth. He departs the kingdom of Corinthian in order to avoid his fate of killing his father only to bring himself closer to the prophecy by killing his father on the way. He kills his father on a crossroad a symbol of choice, he chose to follow his own Will and escape his fate but he was blinded that will to the reality that he was accomplishing the fate he ran away from. Along the way he cannot control his temper and this personality flaw leads him to his our destruction. Blinded by ignorance and pride drives him to accuse Creon of trying to overthrow him. Sophocles use the blindness of Tiresias to point out the great power behind wisdom and understand through Oedipus situation. He sends the message that wisdom, knowledge are important aspects of life one should have because without them we are we will forced down a path of suffering and destruction. Humans have power when they have knowledge and insight but that power is liable to error because in reality we are all flawed with blindness to the truth and our own destruction can be an inner force that eats us out until we are forced to face the truth. With desires to find the truth and fear of finding the truth odious was fighting an inner losing battle within himself that drives to our having to carry the burden of guilt over the death of his father and being an embarrassment to his families legacy. This blindness motif plays into the plays theme that wisdom is knowledge and that the pursuit of knowledge can be futile. If wisdom was one of Oedipus strong suit he would have killed his father creating a chain reaction of
In conclusion, Oedipus has a very messed up story of how the combination of his ignorance and his epic flaws of desiring justice and passion for his people led to his downfall. Although his actions are done out of ignorance and seem fine at the time, he is still responsible for them and their long term effect. You can never escape fate and the penalty for your actions. This tragedy is quite ironic: at the beginning of the day, he is a fiery man ready to bring justice to a killer. By the end of the day, he is a miserable man, ready to join his wife/mother in
In Sophocles’ “Oedipus,” Oedipus is the protagonist in the play, he is indeed the tragic hero, but it is his determination and fate that makes him a tragic hero. Oedipus starts off as a respected king, but discovers later that he unknowingly killed his father, and married his own mother. Oedipus fits Aristotle’s many qualities of a tragic hero, because he is a man that is not only good but he has his flaws; that being his temper. Oedipus’ hamartia; flaws, are displayed numerous of times throughout the play. One theme that seems to be the most important is the blindness of the truth. Oedipus does not realize that he is the one the killed Laius; the original king of Thebes. In “Oedipus the King” scene one, Oedipus and Teiresias argue back and forth. Teiresias states that Oedipus, “shall be proved father and brother both to his own children in his house; to her that gave him birth, a son and husband both; a fellow sower in his father’s bed with that...