Loyalty Conflicts between Family and State in Homer’s Odyssey, and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Antigone
Everyday we are faced with hundreds of decisions. Some of the decisions take very little time and are made without a second thought. Other decisions hold more at stake and can tear a person in two while trying to make the final decision. The basis of many of the hardest decisions is the conflict between family and state. The decision between pursuing a career and starting a family first is an example. Once a family is started, there are endless decisions about daycare, office meetings, and school activities to decide which will take priority. These decisions can become harder during a time of war. People are forced to choose between their personal lives including education, family and careers, and their duties as a citizen.
Some of the earliest recorded literature presents this conflict between family and state. Homer’s novel, The Odyssey, deals with the issue at a time of war. Sophocles also addresses the conflict in two of his famous plays, Oedipus the King and Antigone. In the Greek language, this is a conflict between oikos1 and polis. 2 This essay will present the separation of loyalty between oikos and polis as is evident in early literature and in decisions of today.
A modern example of the conflict between oikos and polis at a time of war can be seen in one National Guard soldier, Ryan. In February, 2003, Ryan was twenty-one years old and had just received a degree from a two-year college. He had met the woman he wanted to marry and had recently proposed to her. The couple had not set a date, but was looking at the spring of 2004. Everything was headed towards a bright f...
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... New York: Penguin, 1979.
Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1996.
Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1984.
Notes
1 Oikos is the Greek word meaning the family.
2 Polis is the Greek word meaning the government.
3 The Greek word for assembly is agora, which is the place of the meeting and the meeting itself.
4 Greek word for tradition, custom.
5 Greek word for multitudes.
6 Finley.
7 Greek word for king.
8 Greek word showing the might that the king has.
9 Finley, 91.
10 Homer, 228.
11 Finley, 120.
12 Auge.
13 Auge.
14 Sophocles, pg 63, lines 85 – 92.
15 Sophocles, pg 97, line 824.
16 Sophocles. pg 97, line 825.
17 Sophocles, pg 82, lines 503- 508.
18 Sophocles, pg 94, lines 756-761.
Sophocles. Oedipus the King. Trans. Robert Fagles. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Maynard Mack et al. 6th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1992.
Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus The King, Oedipus At Colonus. Penguin Books. New York, New York. 1982, 1984.
Sophocles. Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra. Trans. H. D. F. Kitto. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.
“Oedipus is, as it were, only a tragic analysis. Everything is already in existence, and has only to be unraveled.” Throughout the history of literature, there has been perhaps no other character quite as complex and convoluted as Oedipus. Whether it be the reality of his parents abandoning him to die or the mere fact that he married his own mother Jocasta, Oedipus has been continually analyzed and processed by scholars in an attempt to discover the means by which Oedipus arrived at his eventual outcome. To summarize, Oedipus, being originally from Corinth, travels to Thebes in search of his true heritage. After a series of events, Oedipus becomes the king of Thebes and soon discovers the truth. Once thorough deliberation has been given to
The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that the events in Oedipus the King, written by Sophocles, are the result of the hero’s self determination and restless attempt to escape a terrifying destiny predicted for him by the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. My intention is to prove that although the Fates play a crucial part in the story, it is Oedipus'choices and wrong doing that ultimately lead to his downfall.
Extreme pacifists have a strict discipline they follow that does not condone war for any reason and believes and advocates peace. Extreme pacifists live a way of life that is strict and adherent to these guidelines to which causes its followers to not be able to participate in many functions or organizations that can result or advocate violence. I don’t necessarily agree with this view and would not find it realistic enough to be able to apply it in our society today. It’s an admirable quality to which extreme pacifists religiously hold and abide by but it appears to me to be to idealistic and not easily attainable in our society, at least that’s the way I see it. The concept of “just war” began with Augustine, and in his own way to rationalize and clarify what he believed outlined a war to be considered just. Augustine was able to outline and categorize just war into jus in bellum, “the necessary …conditions for justifying engagement in war” and jus in bello “the necessary conditions for conducting war in a just manner.” The final stage, jus pos bellum, “…seeks to regulate the ending of wars, and to ease the transition from war back to peace.”
Sophocles’ Oedipus, Plato’s ship owner, and Plato’s prisoner in the cave share a common theme of reluctance to learn from the truth, and show the role that others play in facing self-identity. All three, Oedipus, the ship owner, and the prisoner in the cave illustrate the theme of deliberation manifested by a society. Enlightened by others, Oedipus finally learns that he has committed murder and incest. Similarly, the ship owner is shown his limitations and thus understands that he is not qualified to navigate his vessel when the sailors quarrel over who would be next in command. Furthermore, the prisoner in the cave is dragged out by others (community of enlightened individuals) and given the opportunity to view the real world for the first time. Therefore, with the assistance of others (community), Oedipus, the ship owner, and the prisoner in the cave are able to acknowledge their identities and face the truth about their erroneous behavior. Through Sophocles and Plato, civic deliberation comes into these three approaches: (1) with the evidence given to him by the public, Oedipus learns the truth of his identity, and accepts the judgment and punishment he had imposed on the culprit before he knew; (2) through the violent actions of the sailors, the ship owner acknowledges his limitations; and (3) the prisoner is dragged from the cave into the world of sunlight, exposed to the truth and returns to the cave to deliberate with others to come out. Hence, all three cases show the process of civic deliberation is achieved through community.
Boston: Pearson, 2013. 1396-1506. Print. The. Sophocles. “Oedipus the King” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing.
Pacifism has been understood as a nonbeliever in any sort of violence. Being a non pacifist believe that killing other human beings is not always wrong. Most people think we do not have an option in being pacifist or non pacifist. Every person has the right to participate in war. Although being pacifist and non pacifist can be very contradicting, many people have stated that those who oppose pacifism say that the world is not perfect. Not believing in pacifism had a lot of political and military support, compared to believing in pacifism where violence and war in unnecessary.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, and Oedipus Rex all center on morality in terms of each character’s social behavior from the beginning to the end of the story. Gilgamesh, Achilles, and Oedipus are three central characters that embody strong qualities of strength, however carry different experiences of morality. Furthermore, all three characters hold different moral codes that are dependent on their ability to resolve the unique situations that they are in. Nevertheless, morality has ultimately impacted the character’s perception of their role in society in terms of whether or not their actions benefit someone or something. This paper will be examining the morality of the three main characters as they undergo major character transformations
Sophocles, Robert Fagles, Bernard MacGregor Walker. Knox, and Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus. New York, NY: Penguin, 1987. Print.
The notion of honor and justice is prevalent throughout all types of literature. In Greek culture, honor is essential for creating a solid foundation within a society and family. Honor will follow you until the day you perish, and beyond. The honor for men in Greece is spiritual in that loved ones show respect to the deceased by giving them a proper burial. Nevertheless, when a man acts upon betrayal of the city, that man looses the privilege to die in such honor. This is evident in the life of Antigone when her two brothers, Polyneices and Eteocles, both die at each other’s hands at war when deciding the ruler of Thebes. Polyneices cannot have a proper burial, because the new king, Antigone’s uncle, Creon created a law that decrees that anyone who tries to give Polyneices a proper burial will have a dire consequence: death. In Sophocles’ Antigone, the quest that Antigone endures to stay true to her pure intentions of honoring Polyneices by giving him a proper burial is in juxtaposition with the fact that her defiance towards Creon is not only to do with Polyneices, but also to show appeasement to the gods.
Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespear. The Tragedy of King Lear. Second edition. W. W. Norton & Company. New York. London 2008.
Sophocles. Four Plays by Sophocles. Trans. Thomas H. Banks. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.
Throughout the tragic tale, the troubled young Oedipus is faced with many opportunities to give in to fate and throw his life away- all of which he accepted and executed proudly. After having been informed of his undesirable fate, the young man finds himself at a crossroads, pestered by another traveler. In a blinding flash of rage, Oedipus murdered the very man he was trying to avoid, as he later recounts to his wife and mother, “My stick had struck him backwards from the car and he rolled out of it. And then I killed them all”. While fully aware of the possibility that he may know not the true identity of his parents, he was not at all concerned that he may fulfill his prophecy in any violent act he commits. Oedipus took the prophecy seriously enough to uproot his life and leave his home in Corinth, but not seriously enough to even attempt to take up a life of pacifism. His misplaced efforts placed before him a choice between a bruised sense of self worth and uncalled for brutality, his inability to discern the difference between a necessary evil and an absurd liability lead him to begin fulfilling his prophecy. Since first discovering the foul outcome the divine had planned for him, Oedipus was disgusted with the thought of marrying and taking to bed his mother, but in a moment of excitement and thoughtlessness he mar...