What Are The Similarities Between Minority Report And Oedipus The King

The movie Minority Report and the book Oedipus the King both explore similar themes, and imagery. Consistently throughout both features, the idea of presumed murder, the imagery of sight, and the question of predetermined fate shape each storyline and provoke similarities between them. Can we be held responsible for a crime we have yet to commit? Oedipus and Minority Report both explore this question. In the beginning of Minority Report, John claims that “[t]here hasn't been a murder in 6 years” and that “[t]here's nothing wrong with the system, it is perfect”. However, the movie continues on to question whether this is true or not. The movie raises the ethical debate of whether it is morally right to punish people for their uncommitted crimes. In Oedipus, Oedipus is punished as a baby for a crime he was destined to commit later in life. He was meant to be killed because it was his fate to be an adulterer/murderer. In the end, we learn that he killed his father because he did not know who he was, and didn’t know the woman he married was his mother. This justifies the

In Minority report, your eyes represent your identity which is why John needs to have them removed to hide from the system, which he does to expose the truth, because “in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark”. In Oedipus, eyes represent knowledge, Oedipus is glorified for his clear-sightedness, but later learns he has been blind to the truth for his whole life. He learns that he did end up killing his father and marrying his mother. Even though he didn’t do this intentionally he is horrified of himself and gouges his eyes out because he realized they made him blind to the sin around him. Both men were hypothetically “blind” to the system or world they were in an either had to lose their eyes to expose the truth, or the truth came out and had to get rid of their eyes as an act of