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Bad Decisions In The Story Of Oedipus The King

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In life, we all face obstacles that often help shape the person that we are today. We are the masters of our own lives, and the decisions that we make not only have an impact on our own life, but the lives of those around us too. Each and every choice that we make will either have a positive outcome, or a negative one. In the story of Oedipus, one bad decision leads to his own downfall; and affects those in his life in a negative manner. Irony is a major idea that is portrayed through this story, where a plan that was meant to be avoided, instead took its course. Due to Oedipus being oblivious to his life story and his surroundings, his downfall could have perhaps been avoided in the end. This just shows how one wrong choice can bring a life filled with pain and misfortune. Oedipus was a very well-liked and admired individual; who was unfortunately never meant to live. After being born, his mother was warned that he could one day grow up to kill his own father; and at that moment it was decided that Oedipus needed to face death in order to prevent such an awful thing from taking place. Oedipus is then taken away by a shepherd, but he is not left in the woods to wither away, but instead passed down to a family in need of a child. As …show more content…

Oedipus came home one day to find her lifeless, so he then took the pins out of her dress to gouge out his own eyes. He afflicted the pain that he believed that he had deserved amongst himself. He wanted the world and the people of Thebes to know who he really was; the murderer of their king. In the end, there was nothing left in Thebes for Oedipus, nor for his children, so they left the city. His children will never be able to live the wonderful lives that he had envisioned for them. They would never be able to attend any festival or gathering, and would have to deal with the mistakes of their foolish father for the rest of their

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Although he was ashamed of the life he had been living, he realized that the mistakes were his own, and no one can bear the weight but him. He even said it himself “No one but me can bear this weight.” The grave consequences which Oedipus suffered in the end consisted of the loss of his mother/ wife by suicide, as well as his grief becoming a threat to himself, as he stabbed his own eyes out, blinding him permanently. After suffering dreadful pain from these actions in grief, Oedipus went on to face the other consequences given by the gods and Creon. He cursed himself many times in the book saying that whoever killed Laius should be banished or killed, and he would even go on to be cursed by his wrongful actions of incest.

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Having gone through a moment of peripeteia, Oedipus’ story now takes an emotional toll on the audience. After Oedipus has experienced his downfall, his catharsis is set into motion by his desire to make his own final consequence and end fate. Oedipus now carrying the burden of realization about the fate he could never have escaped destroys his mentality and anything he knew about himself. He takes the drastic decision to blind himself with the pins from his mother’s dress after she kills herself, sparking pity in the audience. Oedipus accepted the responsibility for his actions, begging to the Chorus Leader & Creon, “Hide me somewhere outside the land of Thebes, or slaughter me, or hurl me in the sea, where you will never gaze on me again.”

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Oedipus Rex essay Final draft Oedipus certainly deserved his fate. Oedipus and his actions are clearly disrespect to the gods , he faces the fate he deserves. He was doing things that would eventually lead up to the unfortunate event of his death , he was even warned by the great and wise Teiresias , but he being himself was to stubborn and did not listen. All the things Teiresias said would happen became the truth. He killed his father, married his mother, yet he tempted his fate , he deserved everything that came his way .

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Oedipus shows that he can be a morally correct character by trying to help save

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When one considers that Oedipus’ actions involving his actual parents were unwitting it is easy to see that he is in fact innocent of a true crime and in classical scholar E. R. Dodds’ essay “On Misunderstanding the ‘Oedipus Rex’” he concludes that Oedipus is fundamentally innocent and states “I hope I have now disposed of the moralizing interpretation, which has been rightly abandoned by the great majority of contemporary scholars. To mention only recent works in English, the books of Whitman, Waldock, Letters, Ehrenberg, Knox, and Kirkwood, however much they differ on other points, all agree about the essential moral innocence of Oedipus.” and while details of these other scholars would take too long to explain in a simple essay it is agreeable that the thought of Oedipus’ misfortune being in punishment for unwittingly fulfilling his prophecy is false. However, the consideration that his misfortune is a result of his indifference is indeed a viable explanation and allows for the concept of Oedipus’ life being rectified if only he had listened to his

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He probably thought the his life was set and have won his fight against his fate; however, the more he tried to control his fate, the more it controlled him. After becoming a king, his people came and asked him to save them from “the god of the plague” (4). Seeing how his city was being cursed by the Gods for not finding the killer, he thought he had an obligations to help his people and pleased the Gods. Despite the “game” that Gods might have been playing with Oedipus’s life, he wanted to do what was right for his people and to find the killer of the former king. He was a honest man and he was only trying to find the truth, but it did not matter, Oedipus was the only who was devastating at the end.

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The consequence of Oedipus’s imperfect noble nature was his eventual blindness and exile from the place he loved and cared for the

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The citizens of Thebes had high respect and confidence in Oedipus that they begged him to help save his people, so they would not have the same fate of the many that already died from the plague. King Oedipus orders a blind prophet, named Tiresias to inform him on anything he knows about the death of the previous king. Tiresias who is physically blind recognized Oedipus from when he arrived to the royal family in Corinth and refuse his request to tell him about Oedipus past. Oedipus gets angry with Tiresias and starts mocking him, now upset Tiresias reveals to Oedipus that he is the reason for the plague and is the corporation of the land. Oedipus refuse to hear the truth by calling the blind prophet a liar.

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In the play "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles the main character goes through a tragic storyline, and then falls to his ultimate demise. The plot seems to suggest that his hubris, or excessive pride, was the cause of this downfall. The author makes it so that Oedipus seems to gain hubris through the acts he carries out in the story. But was this the only cause for the characters undoing? It is ironic that the main point the story seems to be trying to convey is that we cannot escape our true fate, even if we try with all our might to make this life our own.

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1063 Words | 5 Pages

Truly, Oedipus sets out to change his destiny. His self determination proves he has pride in himself and confidence that he can somehow change the future. When Oedipus killed his father he allowed his pride and arrogance to control him. He was thinking with his pride and did not use self control. This hubris that is instilled in Oedipus is a serious flaw of his.

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577 Words | 3 Pages

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

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Oedipus’s selfishness and temper eventually lead to his downfall. Oedipus selfishness made everyone else mad at him for him not believing them. He kept digging and digging himself into a deeper hole. This eventually made his punishment at the end worse for him. He also could not handle the truth so this made him disrespect the gods.

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Introduction The story of Oedipus the king is gloomy, yet captivating. Going from a child bond around the feet and abandon by the mountainside, to marrying his mother, his story is intriguing. In search of the truth about the prophecy and putting an end to a plague Oedipus, search for king Laius’s killer, did somethings inadvertently, making him a tragic hero. His search for truth in the death of Laius the king, as well as his birth led to the ultimate destruction and downfall of his life.

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700 Words | 3 Pages

We have people who have sight but are blind when it comes to the knowledge of the truth, including the truth hidden behind their whole life. This is the case for Oedipus. Oedipus, the main character of the play, is living in lies but he doesn 't even know until Theiresias, a blind man, reveals him the truth which due to is personal character refuses to accept until he becomes blind. This is from where the irony, blind but have sight, comes.

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1224 Words | 5 Pages

So in the end, Oedipus no longer thinks of himself. Thinking of his children 's impending marriage, Oedipus begs for his children and no longer can think of himself as anything more than a creature that embodies what it means to be pathetic: “When you come to the age ripe for marriage, who will he be who will run the risk, children, to take for himself the reproaches that will be banes for my parents and offspring alike? What evil is absent? Your father slew his father; he ploughed his mother, where he himself was sown, and he sired you in the same fount where he himself was sired.

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