Differences Between Oedipus Rex And Medea

In the beginning of the play Oedipus meets Laios on a road. Both were driving chariots and neither would yield the right of way. Laios attempts to kill Oedipus’ horses but Oedipus reacts fast killing Laios attendants and his own father, Laios. Oedipus went to Thebes to help and destroy a monster and bless their town. Because of his heroic act, Thebes recalls him again to help and find the murderer who killed their king Laios and punish the man. Oedipus goes and does everything he can to get evidence and find the man who killed Laios the king: “Is this your prayer? It may be answered. Come, Listen to me, act as the crisis demands… Until now I was a stranger to this tale, As I had been a stranger to the crime. Could I track the murderer without a clue?” (Sophocles 1. 1. 204 - 209). Teiresias, a chorus of Theban, elders tells Oedipus he is the murder who killed his father and also mentions he married his own mother along with having children. Oedipus finds all of that to believe and what Oedipus does is find more people to tell him the truth. Jocaste, wife and mother of Oedipus, tells him through the play to not believe such a thing. In Act three Scene five, Shepherd the man, who took Oedipus to Corinth city’s reveals to him that everything is true. Oedipus makes the decision to gouge his eyes out making himself blind to not see the whole catastrophe. He begs Creon to send him away from Theban

Often the past will present answers to questions about the future as well as questions of the now, and in Oedipus Rex, Oedipus’ past plays an integral role in his pursuit of righting the wrongs that are affecting him in the present. In the play, Oedipus must identify who has killed Laius in order to exile them to solve the qualms of his people, and in a dialogue with Jocasta, who happens to be his wife as well as his mother, she reveals to him details of the death of Laius that seem far too familiar for his comfort (Sophocles 27). This revelation of information acts as a catalyst that forces Oedipus to make the connection between his past and what Jocasta is telling him. This realization that he may have been responsible for Laius’ death exposes him to the weight of the pursuit of justice sometimes hold for humans. Through this dialogue, Oedipus comes to fear that he is the culprit of the scandal that is plaguing the situation, thus putting him in the position of a criminal who will face the due punishment for the crime. This internal conflict that Oedipus experiences creates and

Due to his arrogance and narcissism, Oedipus fails to take heed of Tiresias warning of whom Creon sent him and decided that the accusations that were being made against him are attempts to steal his throne. Likewise, Oedipus tells Tiresias when he was reluctant to tell Oedipus is Laius’ killer, “What then, thou knowest, and yet willst not speak!/Wouldst thou betray us and destroy the

“Then I will tell you what I heard at Delphi. In plain words, the god commands us to expel from the Land the Thebes An old defilement we are sheltering. It is a deadly thing, beyond cure;” (Sophocles.98) “By exile or death, blood for blood” (Sophocles,104). Oedipus become’s eager to find the king’s murderer to punish him so that plague is removed but little does he know he is the laios murderer. “then once’s more I must bring what is dark to light (Sophocles 134”). Oedipus is very confident about finding the truth but that truth can be heavy for him. He passed judgment on the murderer without knowing the facts. “ As for the criminal, I pray to God— Whether, it be a lurking thief or one of the number — I pray that man’s life is consumed in evil and wretchedness. (Line 28, scene

In Aristotle's work, the tragic hero can get caught up by hamartia which ends up leading him to his downfall. In Oedipus the King, which is a tragic play that is written by Sophocles it shows King Oedipus having many different flaws that are under the protection of hamartia that include madness, stubbornness, and pride that soon that end up leading to his final death. Oedipus shows an attitude of stubbornness during the progression of the play. Oedipus' stubbornness is uncovered early in the play when Tiresias who is a prophet of Apollo, mentions to Oedipus to terminate the investigation of Laius' killer. Oedipus quickly disagrees with him, he wants to find the man who murdered Lauis and brought the plague upon Thebes. Oedipus states, "By all the gods, do not deny us what you know. We ask you, all of us, on bended knees." Tiresias' persistence to withhold the truth is demolished by Oedipus' stubbornness and madness. Tiresias surrenders to Oedipus' stubbornness and states the truth which outrages Oedipus; "...The murder of the man whose murder you pursue is you." Oedipus stubbornness is so overpowering that he disregards Tiresias' bluntness without even a slight thought. Oedipus' statement, "To your heart's content. Mouth away!" which obviously shows his stubbornness when he disregards Tiresias' prophecy and regards it as gibberish. Oedipus' stubborn persistence will ultimately lead to his mother's death. At the end of the play Oedipus becomes aware that he was adopted and instantaneously investigates his origin. Jocasta, Oedipus' wife hesitantly encourages Oedipus to end his identity search, fearing that Oedipus would learn of his shameful sins of killing

Throughout the tragedy, Oedipus clearly exhibits a pursuit of knowledge to discover the truth behind the murderer of Laius. For instance, Oedipus invokes a curse, “Upon the

The main one that stands out for both is their anger issue. Oedipus obviously showed a lot of anger and when he did he would make mistakes. Jocasta, knowing the truth, raged into her bedroom cursing at Laius, at herself and “pulled her hair out by herself” that shows a lot of anger and right after she killed herself, while Oedipus also anger at the King Laius resorted to killing. They are also deniable. In Oedipus Rex they showed it a lot whenever the truth kept on being closer to be revealed they tried to find ways out of the truth.

There was an oracle told to Oedipus when he was younger that he would kill his father and wed his mother. Jocasta tells Oedipus that prophets are not correct all the time. She went on to tell him that she once bore a child to Laius, and Apollo told them that this child would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. At that point Oedipus was scared because of the oracle told to him when he was younger. It is ironic that Oedipus could have this much guilt placed on him in this short amount of time. He replied to her, "As I listen, my queen, my thoughts went reaching out and touched on memories that make me shudder..."(lines, 759-760). Oedipus has just reacted to what Jocasta, his wife/mother, has told him. He is terrified because he believes that he may have been the one who killed Laius. Oedipus goes on to ask Jocasta multiple questions about who, what when and where this all happened. After every answered question Oedipus reacted with more and more grief. Every question showed more and more evidence that Oedipus had been the murderer of Laius. When the messenger

The king of Thebes will decide to see this matter through on his own terms, no matter the cost. For Oedipus finding the truth becomes something of an obsession, and it is far more important than what that truth might actually reveal. It seems as if the more facts that are uncovered about the murder of Laios, the more determined Oedipus becomes, perhaps still unconvinced about his own possible implication in the death of Laios (even though he remembers killing a man at a crossroads). He relentlessly marches on, ignoring the pleas from his wife, Jocasta, to abandon the

At the beginning, Oedipus is ignorant and is constantly avoids and ignores the truth in order to protect his reputation. Oedipus’ unwillingness to open his ears to the truth develops when Tiresias reveals that he killed Laius and one of his responses is, “Your words are nothing-- / futile” (416-417). Although Oedipus begged to hear Tiresias’ words, he was not willing to pay attention or open his eyes to the unfortunate idea. Oedipus pushes aside the words Tiresias says, refusing to believe that he could be the one who killed Laius, the one who must be cursed. Later, Tiresias brings up Oedipus’ ignorance saying “you’re blind to the corruption of your life” (471), and telling him a few lines later that “No man will ever / be rooted from the earth as brutally as you” (488-489). Oedipus was put in his place and blatantly told that he is ignorant but his rise to knowledge will also bring his demise. Sophocles foreshadowed using Tiresias in that way, but Oedipus was so into avoiding any confrontation with the truth at the beginning that he would respond calling Tiresias’ visions “absurdities” (494). Therefore, even though the truth has been revealed to him, Oedipus still chooses to remain blind to the truth in order to remain good in the eyes of his people.

In the play Oedipus the King, by Sophocles, a man named Oedipus is trying to figure out what is causing a plague in the city. Throughout the play, many people are trying to give him clues that he is the cause for marrying his mother. Realizing this, Oedipus stabs out his eyeballs and leaves the city. In the play Antigone, by Sophocles, Antigone buried Polyneices, and Creon wants to have her killed because of it. Tiresias, the blind prophet, tries to persuade Creon that the gods actually want Polyneices buried. Creon then wants to release Antigone, but she had already hung herself. The rest of the family then commits suicide. In the end of both plays, Creon and Oedipus both suffer due to blindness vs. sight.

A possible reason for his ignorance, and a fascinating twist, could be that Oedipus had originally believed that he was the murderer of Laius, and knew at the time of the story, that he had married his own mother (Daniels and Scully, 26). All the public cursing, the whole "Now my curse on the murderer" (Sophocles, 172) was really a spectacle to throw the suspicion off himself (Daniels and Scully, 26). However, most literary scholars don't believe this, as Oedipus does seem to display a great deal of remorse when he realizes that the prophecies about him are true. If it is all a setup by Oedipus, then he is both extraordinarily intelligent and stupid, by hiding the truth for so long and being self destructive at the same time (Daniels and Scully, 26). Most believe that "Oedipus has simply chosen to ignore a real possibility" (Daniels and Scully, 21). Howard Clarke said that "[Oedipus] reaches a point where he is, literally, the captive of what he is searching for." (Clarke, 593). He reached a "point in his search where he is carried along on the tide of his of his own discoveries" (Clarke, 593). A part from these interesting interpretations, Oedipus Rex can be read from cover to cover as a normal detective story with all the basic elements; suspects, crime, clues and an investigator. The whole plot rotates around one significant event, which was the killing of Laius. So now we have the crime stated, we

One moment, Oedipus is brimming with hope; the next, he’s sure that he is the killer of his father, King Laius. Every time Oedipus thinks that it can’t possibly be him, evidence proves otherwise. His wife, Jocasta, attempts to prove his innocence but “lets out part of the dire secret by her allusion to the ‘triple crossroads’” (Haigh). By attempting to assist Oedipus, she

When demanded the answer as to who the murderer was,Tiresias told Oedipus that he, was the “defiler of this land,”(30).Essentially, Tiresias was telling Oedipus that he was the unclean that needed to be driven out of the land. Angered, outraged, and confused, Oedipus could not accept this truth of hearing he was the murderer, and further insulted the blind prophet.Similarly, Oedipus’s pride falsely led him to think that he could escape his fate that he was told about in the prophecy. While in Corinth, Oedipus went to a shrine of Apollo, where he was told a prophecy in which he would marry his mother, have unnatural children, and murder his father. “The oracle of Phoebus Apollo said that I/ Must kill my father, lie with my mother. /This drove me out of Corinth. I regret nothing - /I have married happily, raised a family, known the sweetness of power” (61). Oedipus believed that since he escaped his “parents” from Corinth, he escaped his fate and was free of murdering his father and marrying his mother. Because he did not believe in oracles nor know Laius was his father, he was certain at this point that he indeed was not king Laius’s murderer, despite Tiresias’s words. As the tragedy unfolded, it showed further evidence that he had fulfilled the prophecy. Oedipus’s pride, which was once seen as favorable to him, destroyed him in the end.

When comparing Oedipus and Medea we see the battle of good versus evil, as there is in any story that has a heroic or non heroic figure in the, but this time it is a little bit different from a normal good versus evil story since they are of course both tragedies. The question, in these stories, is whether or not Oedipus or Medea display any heroic qualities during the tragic battles, and the answer is yes but also no. As we know, there are many differences between Medea and Oedipus, but they both end up destroying everything they love and cherish around them because of the choices that they have made with the poor judgment that they had while they were fueled by anger.