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Oedipus The King Research Paper

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Recommended: Factors that shape personal identities

Tragedy

A terrible event is tragic when it elevates our understanding of humanity by reflecting on the inherent lack of the human condition. A terrible event is merely an action that has been made distinct by the feelings of loss or pain. It only becomes tragic when the event evolves beyond an action and becomes a crisis of meaning. This existential crisis provokes questions that reveal what is precious about life and clarify what it means to be human.

Both tragedies and melodramas are fictional works based on actions that usually involve some form of good versus evil. However, by invoking separate human emotions, tragedies and melodramas produce different results. Melodramas are typically one-dimensional works where a force of good is challenged …show more content…

Knowledge and truth require objectification. Humans cannot objectify themselves because they know their own internal thought process and stream of consciousness. Humans engage in a false-deception where they cannot view themselves as facts. Additionally, knowledge requires two subjects: the knower and the known. Self-knowledge makes the subjects identical. The duality of self-knowledge makes it impossible for the knower to ever completely know the known (Didier). Therefore, any self-knowledge acquired would always be incomplete and potentially …show more content…

At the beginning of the play Oedipus has formed a personal identity for himself: he is the tireless pursuer of justice and knowledge, the master of riddles, and the King of Thebes. This identity and character force him to pursue his origins despite the many warnings and pleas to stop from every character in the play. As he discovers more facts about himself, Oedipus is forced to realize the hollowness of his former identity. Oedipus gouges out his own eyes when he realizes that he has been “blind” his whole life. His eyes are no longer necessary since they were unable to see his true self. By the end of the play, everything about Oedipus’s former identity has been destroyed: he is the culprit of incest and patricide, the fool of self-knowledge, and the exiled King of Thebes. The emptiness of personal identity is an unavoidable part of the human condition that all human beings must

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