Oedipus The Messenger Essay

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The Messenger’s speech serves multiple dramatic functions. For example, the connection between Oedipus and the Sphinx is drawn when Oedipus is compared to a “Libyan lion” (5, 919). This connection is important because it likens him to a creature with mixed identities. The speech also gives reasoning behind Oedipus’s choice to blind himself. He believed that he deserved a fate worse than death for committing incest and patricide. By blinding himself, he separates himself from the living and the dead, and essentially exiles himself. This reflects the usual punishment for patricide, which is exile. Removing his eyes is also somewhat similar to castrating oneself, which is a punishment for incest. In the end, he was mostly an innocent bystander in his own story because fate and fortune control everything. In addition to the dramatic functions that the Messenger speech serves, it serves thematic functions as well. For example, it emphasizes the idea that fortune is fickle and fate is unavoidable. According to Oedipus: “Death alone frees the innocent from Fortune” (934). Before the play, Oedipus tried to avoid Apollo’s prophecy, but in the end it …show more content…

Andromache’s son is cruelly taken by Ulysses and forced to jump off of one of the towers of Troy, and Polyxena is stabbed by Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, so that the Greeks would be able to leave Troy. Both Polyxena and Astyanax show courage in their deaths, which is emphasized in the Messenger’s speech. The Messenger describes the power of Asyntax’s courage: “So the boy…with his proud ferocity stirred the mob, the chiefs, even Ulysses” (5, 1097-1099). Likewise, Polyxena stands before Pyrrhus with “grim ferocity” (5, 1152). Their bravery served a purpose because it exemplified the fact that when everything else is taken away by fortune, people’s courage prevents them from losing their

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