Oedipus The King By Sophocles

This story is a perfect model for a great tragedy because it emphasizes on human weakness and man’s inability to change his destiny. “Oedipus the King” was introduced by Sophocles in which he introduced the achievements of Oedipus. It takes you on the journey or Oedipus and this tragic things that he goes through. Although Oedipus was a good person and a true hero, he was the unfortunate one to discover that the gods were only playing with him. Oedipus has everything a man of that time could ever want: he has a great wife and children, he becomes the king of Thebes, and has great fame throughout the lands. “The world knows my name; I am Oedipus.”

In “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe and “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles, both Okonkwo and Oedipus possess tragic flaws, which lead to their eventual downfalls, thus making both “Oedipus The King” and “Things Fall Apart” fall under the category of tragedy. This aside, these aspects of their personalities in these texts by Sophocles and Achebe are not helped by the negative twists of fate that seem to make the problems with their behavior more pronounced, thus more tragic in the end. Due—is the nature of fate as it functions in terms of tragedy and the tragic elements of both of these stories, both Oedipus and Okonkwo are partially to blame for their demise, but on the other hand, each of these characters possesses traits that seem to invite tragedy. The difference of both these stories is that Okonkwo bears more responsibility for his downfall than Oedipus, simply because he had more opportunities to change the course of his fate. Oedipus, on the other hand, despite his rash actions, is more a victim of fate than Okonkwo.

Oedipus the King, written by Sophocles, follows the tragic story of a king named Oedipus who goes from an all-powerful ruler to a hopeless blind peasant. Oedipus the King was written as a play and performed in front of an audience. Sophocles shows in Oedipus the King that one cannot escape the fate of the gods. Throughout the play Oedipus struggles to find a solution and change all the troubles in his life. The play observes the story of Oedipus who defies the gods and through the journey experiences hardships in tragic flaw, tragic fall and tragic realization.

As the play continues, we start to see a shift in Oedipus’s personality. This was due to the conclusion he makes based on the conversation him and the prophet Tiresias has. It mentions how Kreon, Oedipus brother-in-law, is plotting against him. “So? You come here? You have the nerve to face me in my own house? When you’re exposed as its master’s murderer? Caught trying to steal my kinship?” (Sophocles 500). Now, Oedipus is arrogant, he blames Kreon based off of the conclusion he jumps too. He gets discouraged from his role as a leader, he is irrational, angry and hot tempered, whereas, in the beginning,

Sophocles’, The Theban Plays, takes place during the intellectual experiments in the Age of Enlightenment in Greece. The Theban Plays is dramatic literature consisting of a trilogy of plays: Oedipus the King, Oedipus of Colonus and Antigone. Oedipus the King and Oedipus of Colonus were written in a very male-focused manner. Throughout these plays, Sophocles’ main characters and main plots are written around Oedipus, Creon, Polynices, Tiresias, Theseus and very few spotlight is given to the female figures such as Jocasta, Antigone, Ismene, and Euridice. After Oedipus the King and Oedipus Colonus, Antigone comes into play in a protagonist role. Sophocles’ play, Antigone, represents a never before seen type of ‘woman power;’ or what in today’s era can be referred to as feminism—“the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” (Merriem Webster). Antigone’s characteristics are symbolic of feminism—she is a woman who goes against the male dominated government, a woman who is strong and courageous, but even more so a woman who is willing to sacrifice her life to fight for what she believes in.

The main character, Oedipus, in Sophocles’ play Oedipus The King is heroic in his search for the truth, just as scholar Bernard Knox states. Oedipus is faced with a decision: he can either seek out a potentially terrible truth, or ignore it and let the city of Thebes succumb to the plague that has befallen them. Oedipus chooses to search for the truth and does so heroically because he is doing it for his people rather than personal gain, he is transparent about new findings, and he will stop at nothing to find the truth.

Sophocles’ play, Oedipus the King, has risen many questions concerning the main character and whether or not he acts on free will or if his future is predestined by the gods. I am going to test the theory that although Oedipus believes he is acting on his own free will, he is in fact a victim of the gods. I will analyze several different sources that discuss fate and human agency in Oedipus the King and then proceed to build my original argument on the archaic debate.

Individuals often blame people for their wrongdoings without consideration of the gods’ role in society which can lead to false accusations. When people are controlled by higher powers, such as gods, they are not responsible for their actions because the gods have already planned their life out for them. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, King Oedipus is accused by the people of his city of some wrongdoings, the murder of his father and the incest with his mother. Sophocles uses the idea of fate to show Oedipus’ innocence and lack of control. This imagery shows that Oedipus was controlled by the gods and was unable to control his actions even though his intent was to save his parents from his prophesied downfall.

(Question 1) The situation in Thebes is that they have a plague. Oedipus wants to discover the murderer of Laius in order to end the suffering of his people.

As one of the most outstanding Greek tragedies of all time, Oedipus Rex invokes a great mix of pity, disgust, melancholy, and fear upon the reader. At times, the audience may fear Oedipus to transform into a tyrant, as he lambasts Creon and threatens him with death. At other times, the play gives way to melancholy and pity in moments like when the shepherd describes his inability to leave young Oedipus to die on a mountain. Sophocles crafts a story that is able to both revolt and empathize with the audience, and this is one of the main reasons why it is named one of the greatest tragedies of all time. It causes the listener to reflect on their own lives, and draw similarities and differences between their experience and Oedipus’s; and by doing

“My parents are really well intended, and I think their way of dealing with things is denial and guilt. Nobody wanted to talk about it. But all I did was blame myself.” This quote, from actress Teri Hatcher about her own childhood also relates to Oedipus’s situation from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Sophocles‘ Oedipus Rex tells the story of a monarch named Oedipus whowho becomes the unfortunate victim of circumstances beyond his control. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus‘ downfall is not a result of excessive hubris or his actions, but rather his parents’ disgraceful actions and uncontrollable aspects of fate.

The people throughout Oedipus’ life trues very hard to allow him to escape his fate of killing his father and then marrying his mother. In the epic poem Oedipus the King, Sophocles tells the story of the tragic downfall of Oedipus. Although many people see the role of free will that brought upon Oedipus’ doom, no matter what choices were made throughout his life, his ultimate fate would always return.

In the play, Oedipus the King written by Sophocles the main character Oedipus goes through many tragedies that presents him as serious and superior to ordinary man. Oedipus’ character does not show how he is like an ordinary person. He is shown as a hero who is greater to the ordinary man then again sometimes, he is view to be inferior to the ordinary man. Throughout the play, Oedipus plays blindfold. Oedipus character acts more as if he has no part in the situation that occur. When Oedipus opens the search of the death of King Laius. That is the first step toward his downfall. Oedipus then covers up the murder when he hears the news. The investigation leads Oedipus’s discovery of more information about the murder and his fate.

When we think about a tragic play or protagonist, most people would think Shakespeare for his common theme of his plays to end with a tragedy. In Oedipus the King, written by Sophocles, tells the tale of the protagonist Oedipus. Throughout the play, Oedipus searched for his past to discover the reason why his kingdom is plagued with wilting crops and illnesses. In the end, he becomes a tragic protagonist after discovering his past was related to the previous king’s death. While the search progressed, he demonstrated his personality to be not what he desires to show to the public. This causes the audience to develop a short of hate-love relationship, or in this case, katharsis.

exercising his free choice by making bad decisions . Oedipus certainly meets these portrayals of a tragic hero. The dialect of tragedy consists of two circles: one is a relative point and the other is impacted and the effect on its audience. Sophocles and Aristotle’s achieve that task with absolute clearness. The modern reader, coming to the classic drama not entirely to the enjoyment, will not always surrender himself to the emotional effect. He is apt to worry about Greek ‘fatalism’ and the justice of the downfall of Oedipus, and, finding no satisfactory solution for these intellectual difficulties, loses half the pleasure that the drama was intended to produce . In dramatizing stories, there will dependably blends of passionate sentiments, suspense, and fervor to discover what’s