Pride In Sophocles 'Oedipus The King'

Our pride often hinders us from taking other’s opinion into account despite good or bad. Nevertheless, sometimes it is better to listen to others for own well being. Oedipus, the protagonist, takes pride in his wisdom due to his belief of escaping fate, and solving a riddle to become a king. As a result,he embarks upon a dark journey by willing to unmask the culprit behind King Laois’ murderer to free his people from the plague. However, during the process, the Prophet alerts him to not investigate further and reminds him of his awful prophecy, where he kills his own father. Because of his wisdom Oedipus wants to escape his fate; he neglects the Prophet’s words and pursues further to approach a shepherd, who alike the Prophet has an unpreferable

Initially, he approaches Teiresias, the blind prophet, who has the quality of perceiving the truth. Sophocles cleverly uses irony to emphasize the idea that everything is not always what it seems. Although Teiresias is literally blind, he sees the surroundings far better than Oedipus; Sophocles created this character to foreshadow who the real murderer is. Teiresias hesitates to reveal the murderer, and assures “that way is best(37)” for both of them. His reluctance creates a sense of commotion, allows the readers to understand that Oedipus is the killer; this is also illustrated after he expresses that “[his] grief is [Oedipus’](38).” The grief he contains prepares the audience for the catastrophic tragedy. Nevertheless, Oedipus fails to comprehend Teiresias’ warning, and calls him “cold, stubborn, fool (38)” out of anger; he could no longer resist the need of unmasking the murderer. The diction he chooses demonstrates the way he scorns the prophet, considers him to be puny as he does not provide him with the answer he wants. Finally, Teiresias is fed up after Oedipus shunned him, and blurts out “the plague is [Oedipus](39).” He discloses, Oedipus is the root of the problem that arose in Thebes; Oedipus is shaken by the statement, and deems that he is a victim of conspiracy. He conjectured that his relative Kreon hired Teiresias to plot schemes against him because of the substantial amount of money and power he bores. However, he considers himself only capable of becoming the King. Since he solved the Sphinx’s riddle, he reckons to be self entitled as “no ordinary man could solve her riddle(41,)” “even the gods’ voice were useless” to free Thebes according to him. His complacent behaviour is evident, it is manifested that his talent of solving riddles contributes to a certain degree of pride for his accomplishment, but he has generated this self-righteous attitude to