Question
What is ironic about the ending of the play?
Oedipus, it was prophesied when he was a baby, would kill his father and marry his mother. So he was cobbled by his feet and exposed as an infant. The commoner charged with exposing the prince, however, was childless and took pity upon the babe, and reared the child himself. Oedipus as a young man learned by the same prophesy that he would become a patricide and enter into an incestuous marriage with his mother. So he fled what he thought were his true parents, home, and birth.
Had Oedipus not tried to flee his fate, he would never have met his father the King in the road and killed him in an argument. Had the future king of Thebes not tried to flee his...
However, the play goes even further than these hints in demonstrating the irrelevance of any supernatural force to the story's action when Tiresias mocks Oedipus for suggesting that the blind seer is the source of the plague (Sophocles 27). When Oedipus accuses Tiresias of a being "a conspirator" to Laius' murder due to his reluctance to tell what he knows, Tiresias responds by asking "Sooth sayest thou?" (Sophocles 26-27). While
In shaping his dramatic theory, Aristotle surveyed the drama of his time and developed certain concepts regarding the nature of the tragic hero. The tragic hero must be an important person with a character flaw that causes him to make a great mistake leading to tremendous suffering and a fall from his high status. The tragedy derives from the fact that none of what occurs is the tragic hero's
Tragic Hero begins with an examination of Oedipus Rex. But, while he is the archetype of this particular literary character, Hamlet is, perhaps, the most well developed and psychologically complex of tragic heroes. For the Greeks, all things in life are preordained, which is what makes for the tragedy of Oedipus - his attempt to make his own destiny. Over the course of time, however, while the form of
Willlam Hazlitt largely comments on the contemporariness and universality of Hamlet's character: that although Shakespeare wrote the play more than 500 years ago, we have come to know the character of the tragic Prince quite well. Not only because we read about him in school, but also -- and more -- because we know his thoughts as we do our own. (Hazlitt 1900) His sayings and speeches are not only
Ibsen's a Doll's House as Modern Tragedy The most powerful and lasting contributions to the literature of a given era are invariably penned by bold thinkers struggling to comprehend the ever changing world in which they live. Spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, the European Modernist movement, which was propelled by the authorial brilliance of authors and playwrights such as like the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, was shaped and inspired by the
At one point or another in our lives, we are all beginners. We begin college, a first job, a first love affair, and perhaps a first dissertation project. We bring a great deal to these new situations, including our temperament, previous education, and family situations. Yet, as adults, we also learn. In romantic relationships, couples report having to learn how to interact successfully with their partners. College students routinely report
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