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Oedipus Rex Analysis

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Aristotle proves that his praise towards attributing Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex as the most important tragedies of all time is well-established by the theories laid down in his Poetics. It is still considered to be relevant since it manages to relate to any generation, regardless of age and race, and as it strongly incites sympathy from the audience – in that, we might be too eager to know if he would be at least free from awful misery he had to suffer upon his death, and also, it elicits fear in having the same situation to coincidentally happen to us. Aristotle characterizes these emotions as inseparable in tragedy as he said that what we pity in others is also what we fear for ourselves. Oedipus Rex used these two essential qualities to generate …show more content…

Aristotle implied that a good beginning would introduce a ‘fresh start’ to its viewers which is illustrated in the play by starting with the crisis build-up, instead of directly presenting the main problem to the audience. The magnitude of this play is best known for its extreme reversal – the trope wherein a good man transitions from happiness to unhappiness due to great error or hamartia, which is according to Aristotle, the best kind of plot since it functions as structurally self-contained and complex at the same time. The downfall of Oedipus occurs just by following his moral convictions and strong sense of loyalty towards truth. This correlates with the secondary element of tragedy which is the character; the plot is driven further to its terror by the complementing consistency of Oedipus for the search of truth. His character don’t really provide anything substantial other than a piece to put things into action. Additionally, the play also followed the basic virtues of the hero being generally good, likeable, and someone of higher status but not perfect (for effectively heightening the fear to be plausible enough). And the primary precursor of the character’s motivation would arrive and produce a certain thought, or theme of the entirety. In this case, the

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Critical Lens As said by Benjamin Disraeli in Contarini Fleming, “Circumstances are beyond the control of man; but his conduct is in his own power.” Although this quote originates from 1832, centuries before Oedipus the King was published, its logic can still be applied to Sophocles’ play. Disraeli is saying that no one can help the circumstances they are born in, but everyone has the capability to live how they want. At face-value, this may seem true; in the end everyone has the ability to make a decision. Yet, it is their circumstances that drive the choices people make.

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When the king of a large, important city is accused of performing an assassination, it is not surprising that the townspeople are overwhelmed with emotions. In an instance like this, the majority of people go through something similar to the grieving process, in which there are several stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When King Oedipus of the city of Thebes in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is accused of murdering their former king, Laius, the Thebans are astonished and lost. Through the incorporation of imagery, diction, and other forms of figurative language, Sophocles conveys the gradual shifting of the civilian’s feelings on what has happened and how it contributes to their perception of fate. The people undergo

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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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The world of literature offers many different works; some may offer similarities while there are differences between others. There are more similarities than differences between Odysseus and Oedipus. Two great examples of literature is the tragic play “Oedipus the King”, written by Sophocles and “The Odyssey”, an epic poem written by Homer who were both Greek poets. Both poets’ work shows similar examples of life altering changes that were ultimately controlled by the Greek gods.

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Oedipus Rex is a great example of an Aristotelian Tragedy because it follows each and every rule that Aristotle put in place, making in a cohesive and well known story. The first part of an Aristotelian Tragedy must be about a serious subject. Oedipus starts out as a quest to find and prosecute the Late King Laos's murder. Once a few insights into Oedipus's entangled past, it is ultimately a story about Oedipus uncovering his past, compared to Jocasta's. This is serious because the audience learns the basis of Pericles's Oedipus Complex, and the audience learn more about the horrific past of Oedipus.

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1. Oedipus is a hero, but he represents most men at the same time. He has human characteristics and feelings, such as his curiosity towards the knowledge Teiresias possesses and his horror when he realizes his horrible actions. “If you know something about our pain tell us…Speak then! Tell us what will emerge.”

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Oedipus the King Literary Analysis Jennifer Tincher When something horrible happens your first reaction is to blame yourself. What if the blame actually lies with the almighty beings? Tragedy is a central idea in Ancient Greek work. Usually it is brought on through a flaw in a character being exploited.

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Critic Northrop Frye claims that tragic heroes “seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them… Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning.” A perfect example of this assertion would be King Oedipus in the classical tragic play “Oedipus Rex,” written by Sophocles, where Oedipus, himself, becomes the victim of his doomed fate. As someone who was born and raised of royal blood, he becomes too proud and ignorant, believing that he was too powerful for his fate. Using the metaphor “great trees [are] more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass,” Frye compares the heroic but unfortunate Oedipus to the great trees as they both are apt to experience victimization of tragic situations

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Oedipus the King, by Sophocles, is really a story about the necessity of placing more faith in others and their counsel than in oneself and one’s own beliefs. Repeatedly the titular character is pleaded with to listen to and accept the advice of those around him and each time he refuses to obey. Ultimately, Oedipus’ tendency to do perform the actions he would prefer to do rather than to allow his family to help guide him leads to his downfall and loss of the throne. A common characteristic of Greek tragedy is the “fatal flaw” of the main character and how this flaw leads to the character’s misfortune.

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At the end of the movie, Mr. Edwin Drood Senior returns home after a long absence. In search for Edwin, he visits the cathedral but he finds Jasper, instead. Enraged by the lack of affection with which his father treats him and the feeling of inferiority he had to deal with his whole life; Jasper strangles the old man with a scarf. After a year, he finally remembers the murder, but in his madness he is convinced that his victim was Edwin, the brother, rather than Edwin, the father. Consequently the guilt he feels makes him jump from the cathedral tower and kill himself.

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When writing Oedipus the King, Sophocles utilized a traditional and precise style of writing. Sophocles wrote this play with each of the occurrences as part of a well-developed cause-and-effect chain, ultimately making Oedipus the King an Aristotelian tragedy. The plot is an ideal case of the removal of the absurd and the treatment of traditional elements of the myth. Sophocles does not embellish any of the irrational parts of the myth. When writing an Aristotelian tragedy there are many elements that must be addressed, one of the many is hamartia.

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1224 Words | 5 Pages

Oedipus the King is one of the most ironic plays ever written. Sophocles, the author, is a famous philosopher of the ancient times The Play is about Oedipus, the king of Thebes, who kills his father and marries his mother. An oracle warned Laius, the king of Thebes prior to Oedipus, that his son would murder him. Accordingly, when his wife, Jocasta, had a son, he exposed the baby by first pinning his ankles together. The infant, who was adopted by King Polybus of Corinth and his wife was then brought up as their very own.

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Brilliantly conceived and written, Oedipus Rex is a drama of self-discovery. Achieved by amazing compression and force by limiting the dramatic action to the day on which Oedipus learns the truth of his birth and his destiny is quite the thriller. The fact that the audience knows the dark secret that Oedipus unwittingly slew his true father and married his mother does nothing to destroy the suspense. Oedipus’s search for the truth has all the tautness of a detective tale, and yet because audiences already know the truth they are aware of all the ironies in which Oedipus is enmeshed. That knowledge enables them to fear the final revelation at the same time that they pity the man whose past is gradually and relentlessly uncovered to him.

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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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Through the outcomes of both plays, the audience is able to receive some hard truths and be confronted with reality. In their respective ways, the two plays reveal truths about the human experience in the way that the plays are symbolic of very real human or societal problems. Sophocles’ Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, has a fateful plot with a tragic ending. His play follows the conventions of tragedy, implementing plot, character development,

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