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Nobility In Oedipus The King

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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. Oedipus first showed his nature at the beginning of the play, when he first made his proclamation to the people of Thebes, announcing a curse on any person, including …show more content…

Oedipus talked to Teiresias about his powers and what he knows in lines 110-125, however, Teiresias initially just wants to leave and let Oedipus deal with his own fate. As Oedipus’s patience runs out, he demands “Out with it! Have you no feeling at all!” to Teiresias, which fails to accomplish anything but anger him. Teiresias then tells Oedipus he is the actual murderer of the previous king, causing Oedipus to go into a rage where he accused Creon of being a usurper, and Teiresias of helping him in his task from lines 160-185. After his accusations, Oedipus mocked Teiresias for his blindness, and told him to leave the palace as Oedipus had grown tired of him. Oedipus’s imperfect nature stopped him from learning the truth from Teiresias before it was too late, and lead to great loss at the end of the play.
Throughout the story of Oedipus the King, the imperfectly noble nature of Oedipus is displayed for all to learn from. His temperamental and overzealous nature made him argumentative and combative when Teiresias tried to tell him the truth about the murder, causing Oedipus to accuse his good friend Creon of being a usurper. 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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He goes as far as to order Creon’s death: “No, I want you dead” (697). Oedipus refuses to listen to others and acts impulsively. This behavior continues when the shepherd refuses to answer his questions. Oedipus immediately threatens torture: “So, you won’t talk

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Teiresias is a blind seer, which is rather ironic. He can see the truth about things, but cannot see physically. He does not want to weigh Oedipus down with the knowledge of his situation. When he is led into the scene, he immediately tells the king this.

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Once the prophet Teiresias began helping Creon, Oedipus accused him of being untruthful. The last prophecy Teiresias gives is that “He will be blind, although he now can see.550 He will be a poor, although he now is rich. He will set off for a foreign country,groping the ground before him with a stick”(Sophocles, Oedipus). Unbenoiscent to Oedipus, this prophecy was towards him, thus it was inevitable. After finding out that Oedipus was her son, Jocasta, Oedipus's wife hangs herself.

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To release himself of his prideful ways, Oedipus took it upon himself to discard the eyes that failed to see the truth. To amend the situation he, “raised [the ornament] down straight into his eyeballs.” University of Pennsylvania Professor, Peter T. Struck, established a literary commentary in which he wrote, “by blinding himself, as opposed to committing suicide, Oedipus achieves a kind of surrogate death that intensifies his suffering.” Struck agrees that by committing this self-inflicted retribution, Oedipus is redeeming himself for his sins in a way that death would not allow him to do. Now that Oedipus is finally able to see the truth, he recognizes his mistakes and exclaims, “I don’t deserve to live among you…send me from Thebes”(p.80).

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Oedipus discovers the body and is in so much grief he uses the golden pins that held Jocasta’s dress and “spears the pupils of his eyes” (93). This unbearable mishap is the last article of the proclamation that Oedipus carries out. Furthermore, in an attempt to keep his children, Creon advises him to “not be the master in everything. What you once won and held did not stay with you all your lifelong” (107). Oedipus was once a man that was not physically blind but in truth he was.

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Oedipus denies the truth and faces the consequences later on in the play. He gets furious when everyone is blaming him for killing Laius. As he is blaming others, hubris appears within his personality. Oedipus becomes blinder as hubris takes over him.

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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

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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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P.13 Oedipus questions Teiresias, curious to know what he knows. “Oh gruesomely clear it has all unraveled… I was bonded with the people I should have never killed.” P.40 Oedipus sees what he has done wrong and feels vulnerable and horror. The audience clearly sees that heroes are very human and how real their limitations. Most people would have felt that same vulnerability if the gods had made us their plaything and tormented us, writing a prophecy of our doom.

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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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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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571 Words | 3 Pages

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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1159 Words | 5 Pages

Oedipus who tries to make Creon looks like an evil person explains to Jocasta, his wife that he caught Creon in the act of wanting to stab him, which was not the case. “Precisely, I caught him in the act, Jocasta, plotting, about to stab me in the back” (Qtd in Barnet, Burto, & Cain, p. 1117). Oedipus who was challenging and discourteous most of the time violent temper plays a significant role in his downfall makes him a tragic flaw. Another tragedy of Oedipus as a tragic hero was that he was a proud man, who thinks he knew it all and would not listen to anyone. One of his greatest acts of hubris was that he denies his fate of the oracle and defy the prophecies of the gods that later came to reality, and despite his growing up in Corinth he was a son of the land of Thebes.

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796 Words | 4 Pages

It is a terrible, agonizing moment, even in description, but in the depths of his pain Oedipus is magnificent. He does not submit passively to his woe or plead that he committed his foul acts in ignorance, though he could be justified in doing so. He blinds himself in a rage of penitence, accepting total responsibility for what he did and determined to take the punishment of exile as well. As piteous as he appears in the final scene with Creon, there is more public spirit and more strength in his fierce grief and his resolution of exile than in any other tragic hero in the history of the theater. Oedipus unravels his life to its utmost limits of agony and finds there an unsurpassed grandeur of

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In ancient Greek society, the tragedy was a deeply spiritual and emotional art form integral to daily life. Perhaps one of the best examples of Greek tragedy is Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. The work is distinguished by the deep emotion and thought it elicits from the reader. This is in part due to Sophocles’ expert portrayal of Oedipus, who bears all the attributes of an Aristotelian tragic hero. A once powerful king turned blinded pariah, Oedipus is characterized by both his pride and his honorable character.

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