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Complexity In A Midsummer Night's Dream

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The Complexity of a Person in Sophocles and Shakespeare. “Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.” Abraham Lincoln (goodreads.com). This quote perfectly helps in describing that people always seem more complex than what they are; this seen in the themes of appearance versus reality, power struggles, and love, which are discussed in the famous tragedy and comedy, Oedipus the King by Sophocles and A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare. In both plays the authors discuss the theme of appearance versus reality, when Oedipus’ blindness prevents him from seeing the reality; and when the four Athenian lovers think they are living the reality but they are actually dreaming …show more content…

He starts believing that this truth is the answer to the conflict and starts embracing his hubris (enotes, 2015). This hubris or his excessive confidence is seen when he assures to the population that he will find the killer and will make sure that he suffers, this is the beginning of his tragic hero journey. ‘’ I’ll start again –I’ll bring it all to light myself! (Sophocles, 167)… he will suffer no unbearable punishment nothing worse than exile, totally unharmed’’ (Sophocles, 171). In this quote, as said earlier, Oedipus is willing to find the killer of King Laius and says that he will face ‘’exile’’. On the other hand, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the four Athenian lovers are put under the spell of the love juice and they are blinded by this spell. They have an illusion they are living in this reality when in fact they it is just the appearance of being the reality. They start having a false construction of the reality that surrounds them and they don’t actually know what is going on. ‘’Ay me, for pity! what a dream was here!’’ (Shakespeare, 25). In this quote Hermia has just woken up and says that everything that had just happened was like a dream because she could not explain what had just happened. ‘’ I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if

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