Adina Salant Mr. Francis Foundations of Literature March 8, 2023 The Vilest of Virtues Honor is a word people kill each other over, a word people sacrifice everything for, a word that people live for and die by. Yet nobody seems to know what honor is. Celebrities claim honor from their fame, wealthy people from their possessions, scholars from their intelligence, and so on. So, what is honor? The play, Oedipus the King, by Sophokles demonstrates the multifaceted nature of honor through the display of multiple types of honor and their respective pitfalls. These pitfalls can also be seen in modern society through the unwarranted honor of those who do not deserve it. Fame is a shield like no other. In our society, as well …show more content…
Oedipus's power, however, if anything, is detrimental to his virtue. He has so much power that he considers himself almost godlike, which is demonstrated when he tells his subjects, "You pray to the gods? Let me grant your prayers" (245). His influence feeds his ego, and "pride breeds the tyrant" (963). Oedipus's power makes him prideful to a point where he feels unstoppable and invincible. The privileges he is granted by his power blind him to the fact that he is still, no matter how much respect and glory he earns, a human. Aa the chorus states, "for all his power, Time, all seeing Time has dragged him to the light" (adapted from 1339-40). Not only does Oedipus's power do nothing to protect him from his eventual downfall, but it also makes Oedipus a worse leader and person. His pride leads him to do a plethora of horrible things, from torturing an innocent old man to dismissing his wife's desperate pleas to stop his search. Many people in positions of power do not deserve any of their privileges, and are much less honorable than the people they control. Hitler, Lenin, Putin, Kim Jung-Un, Ghengis Khan, and hundreds more show that power is not an accurate lens through which to judge honor. Power does not support virtue, and is therefore not a means to acquire …show more content…
In the play, lineage is a large factor of a person’s honor, and plays a role in determining the societal and moral worth of a person. Oedipus’s attempt to comfort Jocasta by saying “Courage! Even if my mother turns out to be a slave, and I a slave, three generations back, you would not seem common” (1164-67) further illustrates this point by showing that “common” ancestry was a source of shame and a disgrace. The fame of the parents that Oedipus’s thought were his helped him significantly throughout his life, helping him acquire a position as the king of Thebes, offering him a new job as a king in his home city, and protecting him from many of life’s evils. There is nothing about Oedipus that makes him more worthy of a position as king than anyone else, and he proves himself to be an overly prideful and selfish leader. Similarly, many coveted spots in show business are given to the children of celebrities with very little regard to the talent of the children. This lowers the quality of artists and their art, as people are brought into the spotlight because of their parents and not their skills. This, once again, simply does not make sense. Ancestry is not chosen, nor can it be earned or changed, so it should not be a factor we consider when determining someone’s