Tragic Hero

Oedipus the King is play that tells of a renowned king and his struggle between free will and his alleged fate. Oedipus was prophesized to kill his father and marry his mother. After learning about the prophecy, Oedipus immediately takes action by leaving his hometown of Corinth and avoiding his supposed parents. In Oedipus the King, Sophocles shows that Oedipus' actions contribute to his downfall; it is his vain short temper, enormous pride, and impulsive nature that cause him to make the decisions that set into action the course of events that not only lead to his own doom, but ironically the fate he tries so desperately to escape. Oedipus the King is ripe with examples of Oedipus' short temper.

Hamlet's fatal flaw is his inability to act. Unlike his father, Hamlet lets his intelligence rather than his heroism govern him. When he has a chance to kill Claudius, and take vengeance for his father's murder, he hesitates, reckoning that if he kills the man while he is at prayer, Claudius would have asked for pardon from the Lord and been forgiven of his sins, therefore allowing him to enter Heaven. Hamlet decides to wait for a better opening. His flaw of being hesitant in the end leads to his own death, and also the deaths of Gertrude, Ophelia, Laertes, and Claudius.

Oedipus is once again controlled by this power when he leaves the place of his child hood after he hears that he is to kill his father and marry his mother. "I shall shrink from nothing...to find the the murderer of Laius...You are the murderer..." Oedipus tried to stop the prophecy from coming true by leaving Corinth and only fate can make Oedipus turn to the road where he kills his true father. Leaving Corinth makes Oedipus lose his childhood by making him worry of such issues young people should not have to worry about and becoming a king of a strange land. Last of all, Oedipus carries the last part of the prophecy out, marrying his mother. " I would... never have been known as my mother's husband.

He chooses to disregard the ruinous prophecy of his fate to murder his father and wed his mother, since he thinks he can escape the divination of the gods. Oedipus attempts to defy the gods by fleeing his homeland, Corinth, but instead launches himself directly into the hands of fate. Oedipus ignores another warning of truth in ignoring the words of Teiresias. He believes he has successfully escaped his own destiny and, therefore, Teiresias’ words mean nothing, yet Oedipus could not have been farther from the truth. In a few moments, Teiresias provides Oedipus with everything he needs to know concerning his fate by saying, “You yourself are the pollution of this country,” (635).

The story starts off by telling us that Oedipus has seen his moira, his fate, and finds out that in the future he will end up killing his father and marrying his mother. Thinking that his mother and father were Polybos and Merope, the only parents he knew, he ran away from home and went far away so he could change his fate and not end up harming his family. Oedipus will later find out that he cannot change fate because he has no control over it, only the God's can control what happens. Oedipus is a very healthy person with a strong willed mind who will never give up until he gets what he wants. Unfortunately, in this story these will not be good trait to have.

Laertes is consumed by his anger and acts accordingly, but Hamlet takes his grief to heart and plots how he will eventually avenge his father’s murder. When Laertes learns that Hamlet has killed his father, he immediately goes along with the king’s plan to kill Hamlet. Laertes agrees to “be ruled” by the King so that Hamlet “shall not ... ... middle of paper ... ...r Hamlet. Laertes and Hamlet both succeeded in killing their fathers’ murderers, but the price was the death of Ophelia, Polonius, Gertrude, and Laertes himself. Although Hamlet and Laertes are responsible for their actions in dealing with their grief, Claudius is the ultimate cause of the death throughout the castle.

Oedipus, being the new leader of Thebes, pledges to discover the identity of the murderer so he can end the disaster. In his searching, Oedipus discovers that he is the murderer of the king and eventually discovers that Iocaste is really his own mother. In a Greek tragedy the hero is a character amply capable of choices, capable, too of accepting the ... ... middle of paper ... ... himself by self-blinding. The audience is left with feelings of pity and fear. Oedipus does not curse God and die though, he does eventually accept his fate, prays for blessings upon his children, and prepares to endure his own exile.

He is blind from the truth even though he has physical insight. A fellow Theban, Tiresias knows the truth, but even when he told Oedipus that he was the murderer of his King Laius, he refused to believe it. Oedipus refuses to believe anything he was told because he believes that he ran away from his true fate. Without knowing anything about his real father or mother, he ends up fulfilling the prophecy. He kills his father, Laius and married his mother, Jocasta.

Hamlet is depicted as a young man who is seeking revenge for his fathers death. Oedipus is a king who means to free the people of Thebes from a disease that has been plaguing them. They share similarities in that each of their love interest are conduits of their pain and anguish, further pushing the protagonists over the precipice. The voice of reason that they share is Creon in Oedipus Rex and Horatio in Hamlet. Their tragic flaw is that they are both ultimately and utterly doomed and no amount of guidance will steer them away from what has been predestined by fate.

What Hamlet fails to realize is that his name is already “wounded” because his father was murdered. However, Hamlet is his father’s son and therefore he is attached to his father and his cause (Kastan 1). David Scott Kastan points out that “for Hamlet, however, to accept the filial obligation sounded in his name is to disregard and dismiss all other relations he has established” (1). He is trying to convey here that if Hamlet does step up and take revenge on his father’s murderer, he would be destroying his previous relationships with anyone he knew if they found out he fought murder with murder. This worsens Hamlet’s situation, because his relations to his father are so strong he feels he must avenge him, but as Kastan suggests, Hamlet is “only the son, sworn to remember and revenge his father” (1).