As parents raise their children, they teach them to always tell the truth. But do people always want to know the truth? In the play Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Oedipus shows his ignorance to the truth for most of the play. Only at the end does he decided to pursue it. In Minority Report by Steven Spielberg, John lived by catching future murderers. He did not have to uncover any plots from the past, until he was accused of murder. People start pursuing the truth when things are going badly. Truth is undesirable during times of peace and becomes a necessity during conflicts.
During times of tranquility, people do not strive for the truth because there is no need for it. Sophocles wrote before the start of the Oedipus the King, “There follow fifteen years of apparent prosperity: a sham prosperity cloaking corruption” (Sophocles 3).
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In a similar way, PreCrime in Minority Report has been around for a couple of years, and nobody had any complaints. John Anderton looked for and arrested future murderers daily, ignoring the darkness of the past. He thought that the program worked flawlessly and that the precognitives never make mistakes. Likewise, Oedipus felt calm about his kingdom. The priest said, “For it was you coming to the Cadmus capital, Who disenthralled us from the Sphinx (he greedy dues)” (Sophocles 6). After Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx, he was crowned king, and the city was joyful. Certainly, Oedipus was proud of his new position and his wife, Jocasta. Life could not possibly become better, so he enjoyed it, without wasting time searching for the truth. He was not even aware about his ignorance to the truth. John Anderton’s life, however, was not as peaceful. Every day, he would look at pictures of his son, Sean, remembering his appearance before he was taken from him. John started doing PreCrime because he