Reasonable Doubt In Oedipus The King

Power has been the single most fought over thing since the beginning of time. The ability to control, own and do as you please are things that even the most simpleminded human desires. We were born with greed and envy pre-installed into the moment we popped out of the womb. As children we always wanted our parent’s full attention even if we had siblings. We wanted them to be “my parents” instead of our parents. As we grew so did those ideals. In school we wanted the best grades, in order to get into the best colleges and make the most money possible. This idea has been the same for generations before us; the idea of having more power, no, all the power. This is an idea that although sounds very pleasing, when acted on as a life goal will always

According to Fosso in his article “Oedipus Crux: Reasonable Doubt in Oedipus the King”, “Oedipus’s present actions in the play are free rather than determined and therefore worth scrutinizing in themselves” (Fosso, 27). From this we realize that maybe Oedipus was not completely unaware of what was happening as he makes it seem at the end of the play. Oedipus is clearly a man who seeks power, otherwise he would have not left his town in order to solve the riddle of the Sphinx and become king. The play itself says it, “many years have passed since Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx and ascended the throne of Thebes” (Sophocles, 1062). If Oedipus was so unaware of the prophecy, then why did he go to a place where he was told not to go by a prophet just to become king? Of course he knew he would become king, subconsciously he knew that he was the chosen son. This means that the prophecy might not have been an unwanted one for Oedipus, but instead one that he subconsciously

According to Simply Psychology, “The id is the primitive and instinctive component of personality” (McLeod, 4). Hitler lacked the ability to listen and comprehend what his subconscious mind told him. These things are the ego and superego. They are the “values and morals in society” (McLeod, 19). When someone only listens to his id, he is prone to do whatever impulse decision he gets, which could lead to some negative effects. As we saw in “Oedipus the King”, both Oedipus and Jocasta ignore their superego which ultimately lead to their downfall. A superego would be the part of your subconscious that tells you not to sleep with your mother, not to kill people based on their religion and beliefs. To most people it is what stops a regular human being form becoming blind to his own reality. Although, they are the values in society and those values can change, the general idea that controlling everything by yourself might be one that could require some reconsideration. This is something that Hitler, along with Oedipus and Jocasta did not do. They felt the desire for an unhealthy amount of power, it went over their heads and created their