When Oedipus was born, his parents received a prophecy saying that Oedipus will one day kill his father and marry his mother; hearing this, his parents pierced and bound his feet and sent him off to be abandoned on a mountainside. He survived the ordeal and was named Oedipus; meaning swollen or scarred feet. His name and feet feature the fact that, since birth, he's been marked for suffering. Oedipus has always been damned, and there's not much he can do about it. They also highlight Oedipus’ ignorance.
Oedipus’ inner blindness causes his status to become a static character and make him have his downfall because of his character flaws. Since he is a static character, meaning he doesn’t change his personality throughout the whole story, he has the same flaws during the beginning to the end of the story. These many flaws range from Oedipus’s arrogance to his selfishness. Oedipus’s flaws don’t just cause his downfall, but also many other conflicts in the story as well. One of his flaws that was listed earlier was his selfishness.
With the realization of his demise, Oedipus tries to protect himself from punishment and shame by gouging out his own eyes and exiling himself out to die in the place destiny prevented him from dying originally. After many years of luxurious living, Oedipus’s predestined fate tears his life apart and returns him to the place he should have died as an infant, the mountain. Through the use of, departure, initiation, and return, Sophocles displays the journey of Oedipus. Not only is Oedipus the King evidence of the use of the hero’s journey throughout many famous plays, movies, and books across all cultures and time periods, but it also seen as a perfect tragedy, in which the audience experiences both pity and fear for the main
He discovers he is he killer he has been searching for and has married the woman that has given birth to him. Caught up in pride and continuing down the path of bad judgement, Oedipus blinds himself because he cannot bear to look at himself nor does he desire to see what others are seeing in him. Oedipus has chosen to live out the rest of his days blind so he does have to face the harsh reality that he has caused hoping it will soon vanish from his memory. Although Oedipus didn’t intend to cause any harm, his actions brought suffering to himself and those around him. His character flaws an strengths of determination, pride , and error in judgement led to his dreadful discovery and resulted in him losing everything he once
This blindness towards doom is made even more ironic by the fact that he was made king by his knowledge and insight. Oedipus was known as the person who solved the famous riddle of the Sphinx, a monster which terrorized the citizens. As the play proceed, we can see how much of a contrast between the two groups of character there is, even the messengers knows stuff that the king doesn’t. Sentences like “My son, it is clear that you don’t know what you are doing” (Sophocles 55) salutes to the ignorance of the supposedly “wise” king. Using words like “son”, Sophocles gives an sign that even the messenger It illustrates the flaws that exist in Oedipus, amplifies it by comparing him to other who are supposedly
In Oedipus The King, Oedipus is introduced as a wise king who cares about the well-being of the people as he solved the Sphinx riddle and saved the country. He is praised as “a bird from the god, [he] brought good luck the day [he] rescued [the people]” (Oedipus The King. 61-62). He identifies himself as a good king, and a son of Polybos and Merope. However, during his investigation into Laius’ murderer, he finds out that he is in fact the culprit; “All!
Oedipus, King of Thebes, has sight but is blind to truth. Since he is born Oedipus was living in the lie. He never knew who were his real parents and what was the real story hidden behind his entire life until it was reavealed to him. Oedipus was born to be a king. Being a king in a certain way helped him discover the truth about his life.
Throughout the tragedy of Oedipus the King, Oedipus displays his imperfectly noble being for all to see. While Oedipus had saved the Thebans from the Sphinx’s riddle, Oedipus’s nobel pride and anger lead to his destruction as he attempted to find Laios’s murderer. In his mistreatment of Teiresias, and his false allegations towards Creon being a usurper, Oedipus shows his imperfectly noble character as he foolishly attempts to fight fate and the gods will. Oedipus and his imperfectly noble nature appear again and again as he attempts to solve the murder of the previous King.
With… the flight of [his] own intelligence” defeating the monster that no one else could conquer (lines 452-453). Killing the Sphinx proves that Oedipus is fit to rule as and king, and pushes him closer to his ultimate treasure: the truth. This action serves as Oedipus’s Road of Trials. After reigning for many years as the King with his bride Jocasta, Oedipus's kingdom is invaded by a plague. To rid Thebes of the disease, he must locate the former king, Laius's, murderer.
Oedipus was a tragic hero he was seen as a great man and was king,but he fell to misfortune because of his disability to see past his pride and anger which led to his demise. By not being able to see past his pride and anger Oedipus was not able to to avoid his prophetic destiny. He was blinded by his pride and anger so much that it became his tragic flaw ultimately leading him to his
Oedipus Rex Henry Rollins once stated, “Weakness is what brings ignorance, cruelty, and pride, all these things that will keep a society chained to the ground, one foot nailed to the floor.” In Sophocles play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus, the king of Thebes, weakness is his fate. Throughout the play, Oedipus is trying to outrun his fate because he feels the gods are subordinate to his powerful figure. Oedipus is seen as a god throughout Thebes because he defeated the mighty Sphinx, who was once haunting over the city. After defeating the Sphinx, Oedipus took over as king by killing his father and coupling his mother as his hubris blinded him from reality.
In the beginning Oedipus know very little, he came from corinth to thebes like a stranger he doesn't know the mess he is in and the mess about to occur. Other people know, and hide the truth from oedipus. Oedipus has killed his father, saved thebes from the sphinx and its riddle, and become king. The citizens believe that solving the Sphinx’s riddle makes Oedipus wise.
Human beings have been baffled by existential questions and conflicts throughout history, and we humans attempt to answer these questions and reconcile these conflicts through various cultural depictions of gods and goddesses, religion, and spirituality. Homer’s The Odyssey and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King provide two interesting examples of how Ancient Greeks sought to define meaning in life, establish and enforce morality, justify social hierarchies, explain powerful forces, and especially to explore the age-old question of whether our lives are tied to fate or whether we exercise free will. In The Odyssey, Homer writes of numerous gods and goddesses, intimately known by his hero Odysseus and his Ancient Greek audience. The gods and goddesses
As Oedipus becomes the first to solve the riddle and defeat the Sphinx, he also saves the town of Thebes and is offered a marriage to the newly widowed Queen Jocasta in gratitude. Years later, at the opening of the play, the gods have brought a plague upon Thebes. The citizens look toward their former saviour for help, not knowing that the solution to this problem will eventually end in their king’s
The Queen, Jacosta, Oedipus’ wife tells him not to believe in the prophet, because they’ve been wrong before, she then tells Oedipus about how she and King Laius had a son who was prophesied to kill Laius and sleep with her but since the child was supposedly dead the prophecy couldn’t be true. Oedipus becomes a bit weary because as a child an old man told him he was adopted and that one day he’d kill his real father and sleep with his mother, Oedipus did also kill a man at a crossroads which sounded like the way Laius died. Oedipus continued questioning the messenger and found out that he was the man everyone spoke of and Jacosta then comes to the realization that Oedipus is her son and kills herself.
