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The original key for the plotline of the tragic hero originates from Sophocles’ Oedipus. The unfortunate story of Oedipus’ life before his untimely demise expresses particular ideas of innocence. Oedipus, the tragic hero, tries his best to evade the sinful prophecy that the gods bestow upon him. He evades killing his “parents” to ultimately cause the prophecy to come true by killing and marrying his actual birth mother. The actual story only takes place in the timeframe of one day. Oedipus has multiple children with his mother. Throughout the day, the secrets of Oedipus’ past slowly arise to the point that he blinds himself and is dethroned. Up until the point of complete knowledge about his parents, Oedipus remains within the vale of innocence. This concept of innocence runs rampant throughout the play of Oedipus. History repeats innocence for things from entire countries to individual people just like Oedipus. Even novels, i.e. The Collector, of present day base their plotline on the tragedy of Oedipus’ innocence. Seen as the greatest of all evils, innocence is the saving grace of our civilization which Sophocles realizes in his play, Oedipus, since civilization reverberates this concept of innocence throughout history and novels.
Innocence plays the condemning factor in the play of Oedipus by Sophocles. The characters that are married, Oedipus and Jocasta, play the two sides of the coin of innocence. Oedipus plays the truly innocent character whom has no evil intentions or past wrongdoings. Jocasta plays the character whose innocence to her present atrocities help to convey her punishment for her past wrongdoings. Oedipus’ innocence ultimately leads to his moral and royal damnation. Without his innocence, Oedipus’ sins ...
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..., i.e. The Collector. Reverberating throughout time and appearing in out novels, such as The Collector, the concept of innocence, also known as the greatest of all evils by some people, plays a major role in the complete storyline of Oedipus Rex’s life in Oedipus by Sophocles.
Works Cited
Dilă, Georgiana-Elena. Butterflies and Voices in John Fowles’ The Collector. Rep. University of Craiova, n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
Gould, Thomas. "The Innocence of Oedipus:The Philosophers on." Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations: Oedipus Rex, Updated Version. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York City: Infobase, 2007. 31-70. Print.
Hart, Megan. "Holocaust Survivor Tells Muskegon Crowd about 'miracles,' Loss of Innocence." Mlive Media Group, 30 Apr. 2012. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Oedipus Plays.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.
Thesis: The completion and substance of Oedipus Rex allows Oedipus to live grief-stricken throughout his successful search for justice.
O'Brien, Michael J. Introduction. In Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex, edited by Michael J. O'Brien. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Lattimore, Richard. “Oedipus Tyrannus.” In Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex, edited by Michael J. O’Brien. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Sophocles. "Oedipus Rex." Trans. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. The Oedipus Cycle. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1939.
Lewin, Jennifer. "An overview of Oedipus Rex." Drama for Students. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Feb. 2010.
Oedipus’ unprecedented nobility, impregnable courage, and tragic hubris all contribute to a powerful representation of a tragic hero. Despite his fall from grace as a tragic result of extreme arrogance, Oedipus is a hero worthy of respect and sympathy due to his love for his people and family. Not only does he shoulder the burdens of both gods and men with a courageous spirit, but Oedipus sticks to his promises as a king and as an exile. While men may ask if the protagonist of Sophocles’ play could have found a better way to deal with his repulsive fate, all men cannot help but tip their hats to the exemplary tragic hero known as Oedipus Rex.
The real tragedy is the poor of poverty. Oedipus is one of the classics tragedy character in ancient Greek. Oedipus the king is the story about a man who destined to kill his father and marry his mother. He is the main character as a murder mystery, a political thriller, and a psychological whodunit. Throughout this mythic story of patricide and incest, the author Sophocles emphasizes the irony of a man determined to track down, expose and punish an assassin, who turns out to be himself. Because in ancient Greeks, they believe that their gods decided what happen to everyone and determined what destiny they will have. The free and fate are significant elements of the story concept; however, in Sophocles’s writing, it proved that how human suffering
The English novelist John Fowles (1926-2005) was educated at Oxford and then started teaching English at different universities in the UK and Greece. When his first novel The Collector (1963) was published and became a big success , he left his job and devoted his time to writing. The Collector’s first draft development was influenced by two events. The first one when Fowles attended Béla Bartók’s opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911). Similar to The Collector’s story, the opera talks about women who are imprisoned by a man. Bartók’s opera as Sherrill E. Grace states in his article “Courting Bluebeard with Bartók , Atwood , and Fowles : Modern Treatment of the Bluebeard Theme ,” is “ a modern adaptation of the Bluebeard theme that has frequently appeared in literature and other forms of art since the medieval age,” (Grace 1984 ,247).
Segal, Charles. Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993.
The fundamentals that make Oedipus the King an “Aristotelian tragedy” revolve around the key notions of harmartia, peripety, anagnorisis and catharsis. However, to fully understand these key notions, one must understand what Aristotle defines as a tragedy. In Aristotle’s words, “A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language;... in a dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions” (Aristotle). Simply put, a play must deal with and resolve a very serious issue. In the case of Oedipus the King, Sophocles portrays the perfect “Aristotelian tragedy” by delving into
Dodds, E.R. "On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex." Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Michael J. O'Brien. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 2005. Print.
Sophocles. “Oedipus the King.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter 11th ed. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2013. 1737-76. Print.
E. T. Owen in “Drama in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus.” In Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex, edited by Michael J. O’Brien. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Oedipus’ epiphany is truthful in his current state, but his decision in failing to recognize his sin before his realization ultimately makes his epiphany invalid, and its sole purpose is to only assist him in receiving sympathy from the citizens of Thebes. Sophocles uses the phrase “this evil is mine” to suggest how Oedipus has matured through the course of his life, taking responsibility for his own sinful actions and behaviors. Certainly, Oedipus is filled with regret, and Sophocles even uses repetition on the word “guilt” to symbolize how this emotion has devoured his entire life into despair, where “sorrow” and “guilt” intertwine by force. Truly, as Sophocles comments, the ramification of making a sinful decision prompts an act of retribution from the gods in deciding the miserable fate of an individual through his rebellion towards evil against the supernatural. Thus, in the tale of Oedipus and his jinxed fate, Sophocles expresses Oedipus’ prideful attitude that is rooted towards hubris and the overconfidence it buys to illustrate the vicious cycle of the sinful decisions we make and the sudden awareness of how our own tragic flaw would lead us into impending trouble and overwhelming
Sophocles’s tragic play Oedipus Tyrannus induces catharsis in the audience and rouses exciting debate revolving around the morality concerned with Oedipus’s crimes. It is often argued whether Oedipus is truly responsible for the loathsome crimes of patricide and incest. Some may argue that Oedipus was merely an unfortunate victim of cruel fate but this would be an incorrect assumption. It is clearly demonstrated throughout the play that a product of blind pride and deeply questionable choices make Oedipus responsible for his crimes. From his dealings with the Oracle at Delphi and his actions while traveling to Thebes one can determine Oedipus’s terrible decisions make him undeniably responsible.