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Theme Of Sacrifice In Oedipus

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Sacrifice is a major theme that occurs throughout the play as it acts as a catalyst. Sacrificing Oedipus as a baby leads to multiple tragic events.
Fearing that a horrendous fate will fall upon them and their son, Oedipus 's biological parents abandoned him. Hence, fear makes it a selfish sacrifice. The thought of having their son committing immoral and humiliating acts upon them and bringing their kingdom to shame, will naturally cause them to cast their son away so as to avoid the horrid accidents. When Oedipus is a baby, his parents give him to their servant and ordered the servant to abandon him on the mountain-side and have his feet “cruelly pierced with an iron pin, so that it might not even crawl to safety” (Sophocles, p. 23). The gruesome imagery and inhumane act carried out by Oedipus’s parents leave readers wondering how they have the …show more content…

By doing so, he does not have to be punished and sacrifice his life for his people. He also has a reason to stay in order to take care of his children. Therefore, Oedipus’s voluntary act of sacrifice shows that society is more significant than an individual, despite one’s situation. He appreciates his responsibility as king, and it is his duty to care for his peoples’ well-being. Oedipus appeals to Creon to cast him away, so that his “living presence” will no longer has to “curse this fatherland of [his]” (Sophocles, pp. 65-66). The possessive tone highlights his love for the city and his ancestors. This is also seen in “but my heart bears the weight of my own, and yours” (Sophocles, p. 27), which intensifies his devotion to his kingdom. Therefore, to him it is best to punish himself for how blindly he has acted. By resigning, he helps his people to stop the plague thus, making him a tragic hero. Despite his flaws, his sacrifice still upholds the image of a brave and loyal king in his subjects’ eyes, hence a

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One of the essential reasons that Oedipus Rex is an elegant example of tragedy is because it renders the suffering of the main character, (Oedipus), who is of noble rank in society. Oedipus begins the story as king of Thebes, but soon realizes after an appalling truth that he is the man who killed his own father, married his own mother, and conceived children with her. Once he discovers that his wife/mother Jocasta has hung herself, he takes her brooches and gouges his eyes out screaming: “What good were eyes to me? Nothing I could see could bring me joy” (Lines 1471-1472). Oedipus speaks these words and elucidates the reason for why he gouged out his own eyes.

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To release himself of his prideful ways, Oedipus took it upon himself to discard the eyes that failed to see the truth. To amend the situation he, “raised [the ornament] down straight into his eyeballs.” University of Pennsylvania Professor, Peter T. Struck, established a literary commentary in which he wrote, “by blinding himself, as opposed to committing suicide, Oedipus achieves a kind of surrogate death that intensifies his suffering.” Struck agrees that by committing this self-inflicted retribution, Oedipus is redeeming himself for his sins in a way that death would not allow him to do. Now that Oedipus is finally able to see the truth, he recognizes his mistakes and exclaims, “I don’t deserve to live among you…send me from Thebes”(p.80).

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Oedipus fails to overcome the fate that has been set out for him by the gods. Though the case was different for him, as unlike Hamlet, Oedipus really couldn’t have done anything to avoid his fate of killing his father and marrying his mother. He believed that his real parents were in Corinth and the best way to avoid his fate was to flee the city. Unfortunately for Oedipus, what he had not known was that he was adopted, and his real parents lived in Thebes, the city he fled to. It was nearly impossible for him to have avoided his fate.

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With the realization of his demise, Oedipus tries to protect himself from punishment and shame by gouging out his own eyes and exiling himself out to die in the place destiny prevented him from dying originally. After many years of luxurious living, Oedipus’s predestined fate tears his life apart and returns him to the place he should have died as an infant, the mountain. Through the use of, departure, initiation, and return, Sophocles displays the journey of Oedipus. Not only is Oedipus the King evidence of the use of the hero’s journey throughout many famous plays, movies, and books across all cultures and time periods, but it also seen as a perfect tragedy, in which the audience experiences both pity and fear for the main

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The theme of The Odyssey is that sometimes sacrifices must be made to accomplish what you must. First of all, in the epic, Odysseus makes a sacrifice in order to accomplish his goal of reaching home. When he passes Scylla’s cave, he loses six men to her. However, he passes the cave alive. This shows that he needed to make a sacrifice, but it pays off and he accomplishes getting out out alive and getting closer to home.

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Upon discovering his crimes, Oedipus states, “Apollo, friends, Apollo has laid this agony upon me; not by his hand; I did it. What should I do with eyes where all is ugliness?” (62). His powerful emotional reaction to this revelation again brings up the question of his moral

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Oedipus goes to a prophet to find out if he is adopted and who his real parents are, but learns about his curse that he is destined to marry his mother. Frustrated and devastated, he leaves his adoptive parents whom he thinks are his real parents. He leaves Korinth and live as far away from it as possible. This shows Oedipus’ attempt to prevent committing incest. He sacrifices being away from the people who he thinks are his biological parents to avoid his fate.

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When one considers that Oedipus’ actions involving his actual parents were unwitting it is easy to see that he is in fact innocent of a true crime and in classical scholar E. R. Dodds’ essay “On Misunderstanding the ‘Oedipus Rex’” he concludes that Oedipus is fundamentally innocent and states “I hope I have now disposed of the moralizing interpretation, which has been rightly abandoned by the great majority of contemporary scholars. To mention only recent works in English, the books of Whitman, Waldock, Letters, Ehrenberg, Knox, and Kirkwood, however much they differ on other points, all agree about the essential moral innocence of Oedipus.” and while details of these other scholars would take too long to explain in a simple essay it is agreeable that the thought of Oedipus’ misfortune being in punishment for unwittingly fulfilling his prophecy is false. However, the consideration that his misfortune is a result of his indifference is indeed a viable explanation and allows for the concept of Oedipus’ life being rectified if only he had listened to his

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So in the end, Oedipus no longer thinks of himself. Thinking of his children 's impending marriage, Oedipus begs for his children and no longer can think of himself as anything more than a creature that embodies what it means to be pathetic: “When you come to the age ripe for marriage, who will he be who will run the risk, children, to take for himself the reproaches that will be banes for my parents and offspring alike? What evil is absent? Your father slew his father; he ploughed his mother, where he himself was sown, and he sired you in the same fount where he himself was sired.

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