ipl-logo

Similarities Between Oedipus And Willy

944 Words4 Pages

Oedipus and Willy: The Consequences of Their Destiny Tragedy has created an impact on many peoples lives that can affect the common person and it doesn't have to be someone of a high social status. In the plays Oedipus the King by Sophocles and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, they show that tragedy can occur to someone in a high or low status in society. No man in this world is free of having some type of tragedy throughout their lifetime. Although Oedipus and Willy were tragic heroes, Oedipus is a superior tragic hero compared to Willy because Willy had the chance to change his destiny but didn't take advantage of it. Oedipus’s life was cursed before he was born, therefore he couldn't do anything about it. However he tried …show more content…

Tragic heroes were always considered kings and were always treated with respect because they were of high status. Hamartia was considered something that the tragic hero had to commit because it lead him to his downfall. Oedipus the King was a perfect example of what Aristotle was describing. Oedipus was a king with many tragic flaws but a prophecy changed his life. Oedipus lived back in the times of Greek Gods where tragedy came from their curses towards the people who did something wrong. While Arthur Miller’s theory of tragedy is that “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were”. He knew that tragedy is also something that occurs in modern times just as in Greek times. The common man could be anyone that decides to create his own free will. Miller believed that “the flaw…is really nothing and be nothing, but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status” meaning that a flaw does not really exist but it is the will of a man to fail. Death of a Salesman was a good example to show that it was the fate of a common man to create its own tragedy. Willy, a common sales man that had many conflicts and regrets about his life, committed suicide in a tragic way leaving his family behind mourning his …show more content…

Oedipus was cursed when he was a baby and found out his destiny when the god Apollo showed him a vision saying “You are fated to couple with your mother, you will bring a breed of children into the light no man can bear to see- you will kill your father, the one who gave you life!” (Sophocles 873-875) However, Oedipus did not know that the ones who found him and raised him as his son were not his parents. After the prophecy, Oedipus decided to run away to try to change his fate even though it was already set to kill his father and sleep with his mother, unfortunately he couldn’t do anything about it. “Its mine alone, my destiny-I am Oedipus!” (Sophocles 1497) This shows that Oedipus knew that even though he tried to run away from his “parents” believing that the prophecy would not come true. It turns out that he couldn’t do anything to change his

Show More
Related
197 Words | 1 Pages

A tragic hero, according to Aristotle, is usually noble by birth, has hamaria, has peripeteia, his actions usually result in self awareness, and the audience feels pity or fear for him. A more modern tragic hero would be a man of noble stature or is extraordinary, good but not too good, his destruction proves a point, and his downfall is his own fault but also his own choice. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the protagonist,

Read More
1290 Words | 6 Pages

Oedipus, the brainchild of Sophocles in his play Oedipus the King, matches well to what Aristotle defined as a tragic hero (Tragic hero as defined by Aristotle). He possesses hamartia (tragic flaw), peripeteia (reversal), and anagnorisis (full knowledge). This archetype of a tragic hero, though, was not rigidly followed by the modern model of a tragic hero. Perhaps the most prominent example of the twentieth-century tragic hero is John Proctor, the protagonist in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Though John Proctor shares the many characteristics of an ancient tragic hero i.e: hamartia, peripeteia and anagnorisis, he is different by definition of a tragic hero as interpreted by Arthur Miller.

Read More
712 Words | 3 Pages

All of which has put me far and long from Corinth” (Sophocles 53). To Oedipus, his prophecy was his worst nightmare; the thought of marrying Merope and killing Polybus terrified him. He pursued to escape from his destiny because, in his mind, running away from his parents was the foolproof-plan to avoid his prophecy. Yet, Oedipus met his destiny on the path he took to escape it. The fatal flaw of Oedipus was his incapability to accept his destiny.

Read More
1232 Words | 5 Pages

In Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus the King, the conflict of Man vs. Fate along with values such as pride and determination for the truth present in Oedipus can be witnessed throughout the story. The conflict of Man vs. Fate is very apparent throughout the story. Prior to the birth of Oedipus, his birth parents, King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes received a prophecy from Apollo’s oracle that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. In hopes to avoid fate the prophecy foretells; Laius and Jocasta send Oedipus with a shepherd servant with orders to leave him for dead on Mount Cithaeron.

Read More
733 Words | 3 Pages

Through personal experience or word of mouth, one often hears of those that suffer due to forces outside of their control and influence. One such person would be the titular character Oedipus in the Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. In the play, Oedipus, the king of Thebes, seeks aid for a plague ravaging his city. He finds out that the plague is due to the unsolved murder of the previous king, and so he then seeks the regicide. Through a series of prophecies, Oedipus learns that he himself killed the king, who is his father, and married his mother, the queen.

Read More
1826 Words | 8 Pages

The fall of Oedipus is a result of fate predestined by the gods and spoken by the oracle. Oedipus' actions are a fulfillment of the foreshadowing through two prophecies that Sophocles outlines earlier in the play. Before his birth, Oedipus had no power of choice as he could not dictate who his parents would be or whom he would marry when he came of age. However, his father, King Laius receives a prophecy from the Oracle of Delphi that he would have a son with Queen Jocasta (Puchner 397). Therefore, it is worth arguing that the birth and life of Oedipus had a divine course foretold before his

Read More
1001 Words | 5 Pages

Oedipus was given this prophecy because the fates knew he would act irresponsibly and

Read More
1843 Words | 8 Pages

A tragic hero is somebody who is well-known and of high position with heroic or potentially heroic qualities. A tragic hero, is remarkable, however not impeccable, therefore being possible to relate to as a human being. The hero 's downfall is the result of a fatal flaw in his or her character. Their downfall is the result of free will, not of an accident or insignificant destiny. The hero 's fall is never a complete loss.

Read More
973 Words | 4 Pages

He didn't really capture my attention of being the more tragic figure. I find oedipus to be more dramatic than Willy in many ways, with his body language and speech. An example for Aristotle's story “Oedipus the King:’’ Oedipus sent his brother in law, Creon to find out how to end the plague. Creon then came back with bad news about Laius and how someone had killed Laius.

Read More
584 Words | 3 Pages

In Oedipus the King, written by Sophocles and translated by Robert Fagles, there is a prophecy that Oedipus will marry his own mother and kill his father. Queen Jocasta and King Laius try to avoid this prophecy by abandoning Oedipus. Oedipus lives and hears the same prophecy as a young adult and leaves his adopted parents, who he thinks are his biological parents. In the end, Oedipus marries his mom and killed his dad, proving the prophecy to become true. In Oedipus the King, free will exists but the outcome of the free will, will always be prophecy.

Read More
1234 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the story of “Oedipus the King” there is mainly one lesson, one purpose that explains how people’s predetermined fate is inevitable and they cannot avoid it. As Greek philosopher Citium Zeno tells us “Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are; the reason or formula by which the world goes on.” This simply says that the way things are in the world is because of how people follow their fates, and that is why the world works altogether. Sophocles, the author of “Oedipus the King” tells a story that explains how a man, Oedipus, was born with a fate of killing his father and marrying his mother. And he was sent away to be killed so that fate could never be true, but he survives and is adopted by the king and queen of

Read More
1063 Words | 5 Pages

This personal tragedy for Oedipus was discovering the truth and becoming blind because of it. It completed the prophecy that Oedipus had received from Tiresias, the blind prophet. Tiresias told Oedipus that he had come into Thebes with his sight but would leave Thebes without it. The physical blindness that Oedipus had also left him with wrongs of his life, with nothing to look at Oedipus was forced to think about his life, wrongdoings, and what had happened. Essentially he was forced to deal with it.

Read More
855 Words | 4 Pages

In his essay “Tragedy and the Common Man”, Arthur Miller explains that the genre of tragedy is commonly associated exclusively with nobility or those in the highest social classes, and as a result, the genre is assumed no longer relevant. He seeks to return our conceptions of tragedy to what he considers the true definition of it, which is applicable to the “common man”. Miller presents a more optimistic view of tragedy in that he explains that it demonstrates one’s “indestructible will” to achieve his or her humanity. He defines a tragic hero as someone who dares to question absolutely everything in an effort to achieve actualization and, because this mission is prone to end in disaster, the tragic hero suffers greatly at the limitations and flaws of their own human condition. Miller says that we associate this heroic questioning with nobility because the tragic hero assumes a “tragic stature” that gives the hero a grandiose quality that we normally wouldn’t apply to a “common man”.

Read More
654 Words | 3 Pages

Here we can see another example of Oedipus’ cursed fate. During the quarrel between Oedipus and Creon, Jocasta jumps in and claims that Teiresias is wrong in the fact that she has defied the prophecy and fate itself. “I’ll prove this quickly with one incident. It was foretold to Laius-i shall not say by phoebus himself, but by his ministers- that when his fate arrived he would be killed by a son who would be born to him and me.

Read More
499 Words | 2 Pages

As Mr Peterson wrote "A helpless victim is never a tragic hero. There's nothing to be learned by watching the deer approach its death; there's an enormous amount to be learned by watching Hamlet bring about his own destruction. " We learn a lot from watching how Willy interacts with his sons, his wife, and how he handles his job. We learn from his mistakes, and his lies. Making Willy a modern tragic hero.

Read More

More about Similarities Between Oedipus And Willy

Related Topics

Open Document