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Oedipus Rex
The dramatic structure of Oedipus Rex is intimately related to its status as a tragedy. In other words, the way in which the play is structured is designed to serve the time-honored demands of...
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Oedipus Rex
Socrates's philosophy of wisdom was founded strongly upon the acknowledgement that we are all fundamentally ignorant: he defended himself at his trial with the argument that he himself was the...
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Oedipus Rex
Oedipus's path through life is controlled by fate. His queen, Jocasta (who is really his mother), heard from her now-deceased husband, Laius, that their child would grow up to slay his father and...
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Oedipus Rex
In the play, Oedipus, Creon, and the Chorus view Jocasta as a wise and level-headed queen. To Oedipus, Jocasta is more trustworthy than Creon, her brother. When Creon questions how Oedipus treats...
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Oedipus Rex
Oedipus experiences several conflicts over the course of the play. Some occur in the period in which the play takes place, although a crucial one occurs before the beginning of the play and is...
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The Oresteia
In Sophocles's Oedipus the King and Antigone, the state is the perpetuator of abuse, and the mortals in power are punished by the gods. However, in Aeschylus's Oresteia, individuals err, and the...
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Oedipus Rex
One account of tragedy argues that it follows a pattern in which the hero, who is otherwise a great and noble character, suffers from a tragic flaw of arrogance or overwhelming pride leading to his...
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Oedipus Rex
Most would argue that Sophocles views the gods as in complete control of a man’s destiny. The prophecy from the gods drives the entire play. While characters spend their lives trying to defy it...
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Oedipus Rex
An ancient Greek audience, coming to the theater, would already be familiar with the fate of Oedipus, the king doomed to kill his father and marry and his mother. Thus, the playwright's skill had...
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Oedipus Rex
The setting of Oedipus Rex is the steps in front of the royal palace at Thebes. This play adheres to Aristotle's unity of place, meaning that all the action takes place in just one setting; his...
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Oedipus Rex
When the play begins, Oedipus addresses his subjects whom he calls "my children, [...] the youngest generation of the ancient house of Cadmus." In Greek mythology, Cadmus was the founder of...
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Oedipus Rex
Oedipus Rex encourages respect for the gods by showing what happens to a proud man who believes he can outwit the gods' will as expressed through prophecy. In his pride, Oedipus believes he can...
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Oedipus Rex
The play Oedipus Rex was written by the Greek playwright Sophocles, who appears, from the limited available biographical evidence, to have been a conventionally pious man of his period. Both...
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Oedipus Rex
First, there is an issue here with the passive voice. While you might claim that certain people have considered Oedipus Rex the most perfect of Greek tragedies and Sophocles the definitive Greek...
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Literature
In Oedipus the King (also known as Oedipus Rex), the male characters dominate the play in terms of numbers. The men are the heroes and the villains in the sense that the conflict on stage and in...
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Oedipus Rex
It's tough to characterize a prophecy which states that one will kill one's father and marry one's mother as "fair," but Oedipus's incredible pride in thinking that he could outwit the prophecy...
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Oedipus Rex
The question of divine justice is important in reading Oedipus Rex. One problem with thinking about this question, though, is that we must not impose modern religious ideas upon the Greek text, and...
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Oedipus Rex
Though this play was written ages ago, it still holds important messages that people can learn from today. One important lesson that the tragic hero, Oedipus, learns is that a person cannot escape...
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Oedipus Rex
In Greek, the word "pathos" means suffering or emotion. Usually when we use the term pathos to describe a technique used by writers of literary works, we mean that something in the work evokes the...
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Oedipus Rex
Oedipus decides to search for the killer of Laius, both because the oracle has stated that it is the only way to rid Thebes of all its problems as well as because "in righting [Laius] [Oedipus]...
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Oedipus Rex
The play begins with a bit of exposition and the incentive moment: Thebes is beset by plagues, and Oedipus vows to find out the cause and to do something about it. Almost everything that follows...
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Oedipus Rex
The most obvious irony in Oedipus Rex is that Oedipus's attempt to avoid fulfilling his terrible prophecy is actually what enables it to come true. Oedipus was raised by his adoptive parents,...
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Oedipus Rex
The most obvious irony in Oedipus Rex is that Oedipus, the king of Thebes, spends basically the entire play looking for himself. The countryside and citizens suffer from several plagues: there is...
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Oedipus Rex
Claude Calame’s essay is excellent: Calame, Claude (1996). “Vision, Blindness, and Mask: The Radicalization of the Emotions in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex” in M. S. Silk, Tragedy and the Tragic:...
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Oedipus Rex
Let's first consider the primary characteristics of a 'tragic hero,' as defined by Aristotle in his Poetics. The hero usually possesses excessive pride (hubris); he undergoes a reversal of fortune...
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Oedipus Rex
Oedipus's prophecy -- a prophecy which stated that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother -- came directly from the Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle was situated in a shrine by a...
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Oedipus Rex
At the beginning of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, there is sterility and a plague at Thebes. This is presented to the audience through the dialogue between Oedipus, the king, and the Priest (1–67)....
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Oedipus Rex
Pathos: This is defined in Aristotle's Rhetoric as a speaker appealing to the emotions of the audience. In other words, an example of pathos in Oedipus Rex would be an instance when one character...
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Oedipus Rex
By definition, a tragedy is a play in which a hero experiences a tragic fall from a high position, typically as the result of a flaw within himself. The hero starts out as basically a good...
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Oedipus Rex
The background of Oedipus is important in understanding the play. The key figure is Oedipus' father, King Laius. When Laius was a child, Amphion and Zethus usurped the Theban throne. Loyal citizens...
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Oedipus Rex
Oedipus, the king of Thebes at the beginning of the play, believes that he hails from Corinth and is the son of King Polybus and Queen Merope. However, he is really the son of King Laius and Queen...
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Oedipus Rex
One thing that this play makes quite clear is that one cannot presume to oppose the gods or go against their will. The pride that prompts Oedipus to think that he can outwit the gods is ultimately...
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Oedipus Rex
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles has often been held up as the paradigmatic example of the Greek tragedy, possessing many of the literary elements that ancient critics considered essential to the genre....
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Oedipus at Colonus
The most unusual part of this essay project is that you are asked to deal with both plays, so your thesis should be on the character who appears in both plays. When dealing with this kind of...
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Oedipus Rex
At the beginning of the play, Oedipus believes that his parents are the king and queen of Corinth, Polybus and Merope. In truth, they are not his natural parents (his natural parents are Laius and...
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Oedipus Rex
There are generally five basic parts to a story: the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution (sometimes called the 'denouement'). The exposition introduces...
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Oedipus Rex
Oedipus himself is a part of the Theban dynasty, a family that was part of the mythical foundation story of the Greek city of Thebes. Many plays about this family exist in classical Greek. Cultures...
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Oedipus Rex
Aristotle's three unities are unity of place, unity of time, and unity of subject. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles's tragedy, achieves all three of the Aristotelian unities. First, it achieves unity of...
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Oedipus Rex
Blindness is important in Oedipus Rex in both literal and symbolic ways. Perhaps the most horrifying literal portrayal of blindness in the play occurs in its ending, where Oedipus stumbles out from...
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Oedipus Rex
First, Oedipus received a prophecy from the oracle at Delphi, indicating that he would kill his father and marry his mother. The ancient Greeks believed that the oracle was the servant of Apollo,...
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Oedipus Rex
The best-known telling of the legend of Oedipus is that of Sophocles. It is told in a set of three plays: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. It is from this trilogy that we learn...
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Oedipus Rex
The nature of the tragic hero is that he is a person greater than average in terms of power, intellect, and strength, who ends up enduring suffering, partially due to fate and partially due to the...
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Oedipus Rex
As the play Oedipus Rex opens, the people face yet another plague that has descended upon Thebes. "Black Death" is troubling the city: crops are failing, livestock is dying, and women are not...
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Oedipus Rex
Arrogance is Oedipus's fatal flaw. Arrogance can be defined as thinking you are better than others and incapable of sharing their weaknesses. Before he literally blinds himself, Oedipus is...
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Oedipus Rex
At the opening of the play Oedipus Rex, we discover the Oedipus is the ruler of Thebes, married to Jocasta, and advised by Creon. We know that Oedipus has attained this position by solving the...
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Oedipus Rex
In Oedipus Rex, the oracle at Delphi does not tell Oedipus to leave Corinth. Oedipus hears a rumor that his parents are not his true parents, so he goes to consult the oracle to find out if the...
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Oedipus Rex
Every tragic hero has a tragic flaw, a hamartia, and Oedipus is no exception to the rule. Usually this hamartia is hubris: excessive pride or self-confidence. Every mortal needs pride to some...
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Oedipus Rex
Irony is, in fact, a literary technique which originated in Greek tragedy. Most common is dramatic irony in which a character's actions or words are understood by the audience, but unknown to the...
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Oedipus Rex
The ancient Greeks believed that destiny was determined at birth by the Fates--three sister gods who controlled each person's life and death. Gods ruled over the fate of each Greek, and there was...
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Oedipus Rex
Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (Greek: Oedipus Tyrannos) first appeared on the stage in Athens during the early years of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and its allies and Sparta and its allies. Like...
