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Oedipus the king literary elements
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Oedipus: The Tragic Hero “A man doesn’t become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall.” – Aristotle. In Oedipus the King, Oedipus attended to escape the prophecy that was given in Corinth, but in reality, he ended up running towards his true doom that lied within Thebes. He was considered a tragic hero, according to Aristotle, because he acknowledged his mistakes, made himself suffer more than he deserved, and thought about his children in a serious situation. According to the play, Oedipus acknowledged his mistakes after he began putting the pieces together about the murderer of King Laius. Everything started making sense when his wife, Jocasta, started telling him about what happened to King Laius, and the messenger, from
Oedipus is a tragic hero being that he was a king who had a high position in his community to a person who wished to be released from the city forever. Oedipus says " Cast me out as quickly as you can, away from Thebes, to a place where no one, no living human being, will cross my path" (Sophocles ll. 1697-1699). Oedipus was once a person who citizens looked to for answers to problems, and a person who had control over a whole city. To a person who wished to be banished from a new king of Thebes. The use of tragic hero in the story shows a slow slope of not only his position as king, but a man who loses his family and gains information about his real identity. Sending him to his
Undoubtedly there has been a tremendous amount of speculation and dissection of this play by countless people throughout the ages. I can only draw my own conclusions as to what Sophocles intended the meaning of his play to be. The drama included a number of horrific and unthinkable moral and ethical dilemas, but I believe that was what made the play so interesting and that is exactly the way Sophocles intended it to be. The play was obviously meant to entertain and portray the author’s own insight. The underlying theme to the play is that no man should know his own destiny, it will become his undoing. This knowledge of things to come was presented to both Laius and Oedipus in the form of prophecies well in advance of it coming to be. The prophecies told of things that were so morally disturbing that they both aggressively did everything in their power to try and stop them from coming true. The story begins with Oedipus at the height of power as King of Thebes. His kingdom has encountered rough times and he has sent his nobleman Creon to seek help from the god Apollo to restore his land. Creon tells Oedipus that he must find the murderer of the previous King Laius and by finding this man and banishing him, his land will be restored. The murder occurred some time ago and King Oedipus sends for the seer Theiresias with his powers of prophecy to aid in the search for the murderer. Sophocles cleverly projects his feelings on wisdom and knowledge through Teirsias when he says “Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the man that’s wise!”(23) Teirsias knows that this terrible prophecy has already been set into motion and the damage has already been done. There is really no point in telling it to Oedipus because it will only cause more harm than good. Oedipus provokes Teirsias into telling him the prophecy, “ Í tell you, king, this man, this murderer-he is here. In name he is a stranger among citizens but soon he will be shown to be a citizen true native Theban, and he’ll have no joy of the discovery: blindness for sight and beggary for riches his exchange, he shall go journeying to a foreign country tapping his way befor him with a stick.
On a warm, Summer's afternoon, I sat in my room, a Wii remote clutched in my right hand and a Wii Nunchuck in the other.
Throught Oedipus Rex, Oedipus displays his heroism many times. From the Prologue of the play to the moment in which he leaves Thebes, Oedipus' heroics are extremely apparent; however, at the same time, the decisions which make Oedipus a hero ultimately become the decisions which bring him to shame and exile.
The ancient Greeks were fond believers of Fate. Fate, defined according to Webster’s, is “the principle or determining cause or will by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as the do.” The Greeks take on Fate was slightly modified. They believed that the gods determined Fate: “…fate, to which in a mysterious way the gods themselves were subject, was an impersonal force decreeing ultimate things only, and unconcerned with day by day affairs.” It was thought that these gods worked in subtle ways; this accounts for character flaws (called harmatia in Greek). Ancient Greeks thought the gods would alter a person’s character, in order for that person to suffer (or gain from) the appropriate outcome. Such was the case in Oedipus’s story.
Spanning a period of thirty years, Sophocles produced three plays all with similar thematic qualities. One such production features "a noble man who seeks knowledge that in the end destroys him" (70). Although, the Athenian audience was familiar with the original narrative of Oedipus Rex, spectators still found joy in watching the play unfold before them. In the play, Sophocles demonstrates to the audience through the main character that blindness is not necessarily limited to physical blindness, but can equally afflict intellectually capabilities. Such as, he contrasts Teiresias literal loss of sight with Oedipus' metaphorical vision. Sophocles uses physical and symbolic blindness as a reoccurring concept in order to emphasize Oedipus' evolution as a character.
Oedipus has a "tragic flaw" that leads to his demise, and efforts to attribute one to him to him seem forced . In his quest to uncover the truth and rid Thebes of the plague, he exhibits all the heroic qualities that made him the savior of Thebes during the Sphinx's reign of terror. Oedipus as a victim of a fate he could not control. He had enormous control over the events of his "destiny" through the numerous decisions he makes. He chooses to believe the oracle and leave Corinth.
Man controls his fate by the choices that he makes. In being able to chose what his own actions are, fate is a result of his decisions. In Oedipus the King, the Greek writer, Sophocles, uses characterization and dramatic irony to project a theme throughout the play providing the idea that man is responsible for his own fate.
Throughout the play, Oedipus is faced with the truth and fails to acknowledge it. He is first told by the drunk at the party, but he dismisses it as just something said by an ignorant drunk. He then visits the oracle and is told his fate determined by the gods and believes he can escape it by fleeing to Thebes. On his way he carries out the first part of the fate by killing his father. He then makes it to Thebes and marries Jocasta, unknowingly fulfilling the fate. Teiresias finally tells Oedipus the horrible truth, but Oedipus calls him a liar and fails to recognize the truth again. When Oedipus finally figures that what the oracle, drunk, and Teiresias was all true, he cannot handle it and blinds himself while Jocasta kills herself.
What would you do if someone told you you would end up killing your father and marrying your mother when you grow up? You would do anything to keep that from happening, wouldn’t you? Oedipus did in Oedipus the King by Sophocles. Unfortunately, Oedipus fails in avoiding his fate. Faced with a choice between pursuing the truth which everyone tells him would lead to his destruction or accepting a life without knowing any better, Oedipus chooses self-knowledge over self-deception. This makes Oedipus a perfect example of a tragic hero. In Greek drama, a tragic hero is a protagonist of a noble birth who possesses a tragic flaw that leads to his down fall but shows the courage to accept responsibility for his own actions.
Tragic heroes are heroes of a story with a trait or flaw that ultimately leads to their downfall. In the play Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, Oedipus, the protagonist of the story, shows many examples of his pride and how his pride causes tragic events to take place. His many prideful moments in the play such as, the altercation with his father and Oedipus believing that the prophet was lying so Tiresias and Creon could take the throne. Consequently, Oedipus’ pride is ultimately the cause of his downfall and dethroning.
Oedipus discovers that the child of king Laius, and queen Jocasta was sent away to die as a child. As he seeks for the reason for this child being sent away he stumbles upon the fact that the child was prophesized to kill his father and he would lay with his mother. From this he became suspicious that the child may be him. He realized that while he had been considered a hero at the same time he had been doing what the oracle told him he would do.
In fact, every feature in the definition of the tragic hero can be applied to the character of Oedipus. First, he is a good man. He made a virtuous service to Thebes and save the city by solving the riddle of Sphinx. In addition, he is good king and he can feel the suffering of his people because of the plague. He tells them "each one of you is enclosed to himself" he tells them that his suffering is greater than ...
Tragedies have been written, told, and acted out for a number of years. Aristotle defined in his book, Poetics that a tragedy is to arouse the emotions of pity, fear, and finally a catharsis, or purging of emotions. A tragic play that perfectly completes this cycle of emotions is Oedipus the King by Sophocles. This play follows a king of the town of Thebes through his journey of the emotions of pity, fear, and finally a catharsis. It is a tale of a man who unknowingly kills his father and fathers the children of his mother as well. The audience is pulled into the play and experiences the plot along with Oedipus.
Oedipus the King is an excellent example of Aristotle's theory of tragedy. The play has the perfect Aristotelian tragic plot consisting of paripeteia, anagnorisis and catastrophe; it has the perfect tragic character that suffers from happiness to misery due to hamartia (tragic flaw) and the play evokes pity and fear that produces the tragic effect, catharsis (a purging of emotion).