Lee Spinks Oedipus: The Purpose Of Tragedy

Aristotle defines tragedy as the opportunity for us as human beings to learn something about our nature, vulnerability. Tragedy gives us no choice but to express and show how we really feel, and at the same time it allows us to experience pity and fear in a safe space, where both of these emotions are aroused but in a nonthreatening way - this is called the catharsis of pity and fear - and the emotions instead of causing an action, lead to us reflecting about our situation. Also, tragedy reveals the purpose of human existence and as Lee Spinks states in Friedrich Nietzsche, in order for us to grow and become conscious of what we can really do and accomplish we have to undertake a lot of changes that will ultimately cause us pain and fear but

And later, married Jocasta - Laius' widow thus, his mother. Throughout the play, Oedipus wanted to have control over everything that was going on, and over everyone involved with him and his family. He started as the most powerful character in the play and ended up being the weakest one due to his need and urge to control even the unpredictable and to know the answer and reason for everything. It all turned into what's called rationality vs. fate because by wanting to find out who killed Laius (rationality) - to make sure that the prophecy wasn't true(fate) - Oedipus was fighting fate but the more he and Jocasta, his mom/wife, kept running away from it, the faster they brought it to themselves. Therefore,

First, by making up that Othello was seducing Barbantino's daughter, Desdemona, and then, throughout the play by trying to brainwash Othello and make him believe that his wife was being unfaithful to him. And Othello being the kind of person that needs to be certain about everything that goes on around him, wanted to find out for sure if his spouse was cheating on him as Iago has told him; so, Iago took advantage of this and planted Desdemona's handkerchief on Cassio, using it as the ocular proof Othello was asking for. Throughout this play we see what nowadays are called, trust issues - even though we knoe that the person we are in a relationship with is being faithful to us, we want to just make sure, looking for and bringing up situations that are neither relevant nor necessary. Othello wanted to know what Iago, Desdemona and Cassio were thinking in order to find out if the rumors were true, but the truth is that there is no way that we can have access to other people's thoughts, we have to choose to trust them. Our awareness to other people's actions is not based on knowledge but on trust because we will never know it all and there is always the possibility that what people show is not really who they are or what they feel. Therefore, trust i spresent to fill in for the fact that knowledge is absent. When trust isn't enough, we seek a visible and tangible proof - like Othello