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The Hard Boiled Private Eye

Decent Essays

The hard-boiled private eye is a mysterious protagonist who is a professional investigator. With a first look at Oedipus Rex in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Jake Gittes in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown they seem to be very different from each other. Jake Gittes is a busy detective that lets solving cases consume his life and Odeipus Rex is a brand new King in the city of Thebes whose is cursed with a fate that cannot be changed. After reading Oedipus the King and watching Chinatown, it’s clear that both stories share similar characteristics such as corruption, lies and even incest.
Oedipus the King is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, that follows the story of King Oedipus of Thebes as he discovers that he has unwittingly killed his own father, Laius, and married his own mother, Jocasta. When Oedipus was a baby his parents were told by a prophet that the baby would grow up to kill his father and marry his own mother. Oedipus’ mother and father sent him away to be hanged by his ankles until death. Oedipus was later found and taken to a queen and king in another kingdom where he would grow up thinking they were his real parents. When Oedipus get older he gets told by a drunken man that he is a bastard child and this sends him on a mission to find out the truth. Oedipus goes to the bind prophet for answers and after threating the prophet’s life he gets the full truth. Oedipus learns that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother, so he decides

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