Oedipus: Human nature vs. Character In Sophocles’s “Oedipus the King”, Oedipus “son” of Merope and Polybus, is faced with the prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother. All of his doubts start when a drunken man tells Oedipus that his parents weren’t his parents, “Polybus was nothing to you, that’s why, not in blood.” (pg. 218). Oedipus later confronts his parents about it and is told that he is their son. After hearing the prophecy from the oracle Oedipus decides to leave Corinth and never return. He wants to leave so that the prophecy can never be fulfilled. The action can be justified from his character and human nature. Firstly, it is in a human's nature to be selfish, every human being at one point in their lifetime has exhibited this trait. In Oedipus’s case he doesn’t want to be the one to hurt his family, now at a glance, that doesn’t seem selfish. It is when the readers see that by saving his family he is consequently saving his humanity. Throughout the duration of the play, the audience can see how just how much Oedipus wants to know the truth. However, he doesn't truly listen to the people around him. In this instance, human nature is what ultimately fuels Oedipus’s decision. …show more content…
He honestly believed that what he was doing was the right thing in order to preserve his family and his humanity. What he doesn’t know is that all of these years he has been trying to hide from the prophecy it has already come true. It is Oedipus's tragic flaw hubris, that is conclusively the very reason that Oedipus's crimes were announced. Once Oedipus found out that the plague would be ended with the capture of Laius's murder. Oedipus dedicates himself to finding the truth and the killer, “I’ll start again- I’ll bring it out to light myself!... I am the land’s avenger by all rights.” (pg. 167) It is his pride that ultimately brings his
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.
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.
He was so afraid of the pain and sadness of seeing all those he hurt that he cared dearly about. To Oedipus, not only was it just punishment for his crimes, it also helped him get over knowing what he had done. Even though this is true of the reasons Oedipus gave, arrogance played an overwhelming role. Instead of finding out if he was then staying in Corinth where he would have known his parents were not, would have been a better way to outwit the gods. His arrogance in trying to outwit the gods put him on the same road fate had in store.
However, he may also have been deciding to do this through passion. His need for his land to be perfectly normal might have prompted this immediate decision. Reason also occurs through the character of Oedipus himself. He has a heroic confidence in his own abilities, and he has good reason for such confidence, both from his own sense of past achievements and from the very high regard everyone has of those achievements. He is conscious of himself as a great man.
While reading the play Oedipus the King, my response to the work became more and more clear as the play continued. When I finished the play, my reaction to the work and to two particular characters was startling and very different from my response while I was still reading. My initial response was to the text, and it was mostly an intellectual one. I felt cheated by the play because the challenge of solving the mystery of the plot was spoiled for me by the obvious clues laid out in the work. My second response was not as intellectual; instead, it came more from a feeling that the play evoked in me. I felt a strong disappointment in the drastic actions that Oedipus and Jocasta took at the end of the play. My two different responses to Oedipus the King, one intellectual and one not, now seem to feed off and to amplify each other as if they were one collective response.
It is impossible to speculate what may have happened to Oedipus had he stayed in Corinth, but it is the attempt to avoid his fate that dooms him to not only to fulfill the prophecy, but to suffer yet greater consequences. To think that he himself has the power to circumvent the prediction from the Oracle of Apollo, shows that he did not feel humbled before Apollo. Punishment for this lack of faith takes the form of the plague which Apollo imposes on Thebes, an eventual consequence of Oedipus’s defiance and hubris towards the him. (The death of Laios at the crossroads, was caused, in part at least, because Oedipus left Corinth. Speculation as to whether Oedipus would have killed him anyway is futile.) The punishment of all of Thebes is infinitely worse than the original prophecy, which involved only Oedipus’ family members.
Oedipus took great pride in saving people and being seen a hero. He wanted the death of Laius to be avenged and he had to be the one to find the murderer and punish him. "I'll fight for him, I'll leave no means untried, to cach the one who did it with his hand..." (Literature, Oedipus the King, Ln. 270-271, page 1081) He did not want to let the people of Thebes down, and he wanted to show that he would be a true hero once again.
It is clear to see that Oedipus is an impulsive and passionate man, which causes Oedipus to fulfill the prophecy that haunts him. He flees the kingdom of Corinthian in order to avoid his fate. Along his journey he comes to a crossroad that is blocked by a chariot, and “in a fit of anger” Oedipus kills the father he never knew (Meyer 1422). Oedipus’ anger causes him to kill the father he never knew and all the men in the entourage. Oedipus’ cannot control his temper and this personality flaw leads him to his fate.
However, this argument is flawed because Sophocles portrays Oedipus as being generally relatable to the reader. For example, soon after he had learned that the prophecy came true, he shows his affection towards his children in a moving speech. One part that was especially heart-wrenching was when Oedipus says to his children, “I weep for you -- I cannot see your faces -- I weep when I think of the bitterness there will be in your lives, how you must live before the world,” (Sophocles lines 185-188). Oedipus’s fate can’t be justified by his own actions because he is a morally relatable human. This contention is also supported in Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle writes that the protagonist of any good tragedy ought to be neither morally superior nor morally defective. If Oedipus’s punishment was due to his character flaws, it follows that every normal person should meet a similar demise! Instead, his life was the gods’ method of bringing justice to the crime perpetrated by his father. Oedipus being punished for a crime that he didn’t commit shows the insignificance of the acts and intentions of humans compared to the goals of the
He could have also declined to marry the former king 's wife, unaware that the queen was his own mother. He accepted both of these without any regrets. If his decision was different it might have altered the course of events in the future. His personality made sure that the decisions went the way they did. These choices were made by Oedipus with his own free will, his own decisions. He didn 't have to accept these gifts, but did none the less. These conclusions would lead to his own demise, but they were his own mistakes, not
This essay will illustrate the types of characters depicted in Sophocles’ tragic drama, Oedipus Rex, whether static or dynamic, flat or round, and whether protrayed through the showing or telling technique.
Here is a story where Oedipus the King, who has accomplished great things in his life, discovers that the gods were only playing with him. He has everything a man of that time could want; he is king of Thebes, he has a wonderful wife and children, and great fame through out the lands. He has lived a good life, but in the end everything is taken from him.
Oedipus Rex, an ancient Greek tragedy authored by the playwright Sophocles, includes many types of psychological phenomena. Most prominently, the myth is the source of the well-known term Oedipal complex, coined by psychologist Sigmund Freud in the late 1800s. In psychology, “complex” refers to a developmental stage. In this case the stage involves the desire of males, usually ages three to five, to sexually or romantically posses their mother, and the consequential resentment of their fathers. In the play, a prince named Oedipus tries to escape a prophecy that says he will kill his father and marry his mother, and coincidentally saves the Thebes from a monster known as the Sphinx. Having unknowingly killed his true father Laius during his escape, he marries the widowed queen of Thebes, his mother Jocasta. Many events in the story should lead to suspicion of their marriage, but out of pride and ignorance Oedipus stubbornly refuses to accept his fate. Together, these sins represent the highest taboos of Greek society, revealed by Socphocles’s depiction of the already pervasive story. Before the Thebian plays, the myth centered more around Oedipus’s journey of self-awareness; meanwhile, Sophocles shows Oedipus’s struggles with his inevitable desire toward his mother throughout these stages of psychological development.
Sophocles demonstrates in the play Oedipus the King that a human being, not a God, ultimately determines destiny. That is, people get what they deserve. In this play, one poorly-made judgment results in tragic and inescapable density. Oedipus fights and kills Laius without knowing Laius is his father. Then, Oedipus's pitiless murdering causes several subsequent tragedies such as the incestuous marriage of Oedipus gets into the flight with Laius. However, Oedipus's characteristics after Laius's death imply that Oedipus could avoid the fight as well as the murder of his father, but did not. Ultimately, Oedipus gets what he deserves due to his own characteristics that lead him to murder Laius: impatience, delusion, and arrogance.
When he confirms through two messengers and an oracle that he is destined to marry his mother and kill his father, he completely panics. He knows that is something he definitely wants to avoid, so he decided he would attempt to change his fate. But at that time, he did not realize that your fate is your fate, and it will not change. When Oedipus realizes what his future holds, he decides to avoid it at all costs. As a result, he picked up and ran away.