Limits In Oedipus The King And Minority Report

Oedipus’ foolish decisions ultimately lead to his downfall in the play. Oedipus chooses to kill Laios. He chooses to marry Iocaste. He chooses to forcefully, and publicly, assume the mission of discovering the identity of Laios’ murderer saying ironically, “I say I take the son’s part, just as though I were his son, to press the fight for him and see it won,” (633). He proceeds on this mission and chooses to ignore the warnings of Creon, Iocaste, Teiresias, the messenger, the shepherd, and anyone who attempts to stand between him and the truth; and, he chooses to blind himself. In the end, Oedipus’ most foolish choice prevails throughout the play; the choice of illusion over reality ultimately costs him his life.

Oedipus doesn’t realize the personal consequences his hunt for the murderer will have for him, and his loyalty to the truth is based on his ignorance. His pride, ignorance and unrelenting quest for the truth ultimately contributed to his destruction. An example is when Oedipus was told [after threatening Tiresias], that he was responsible for the murder of Laius. He became enraged and called the old oracle a liar. However, Oedipus thought he could outsmart the gods, but in fact, his every action moved him closer to the prophesy becoming a reality. Upon discovery of the truth of his birth from the herdsman, Oedipus cries, “O god all come true, all burst to light!/O light now let me look my last on you!/I stand revealed at last cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands”. (631). Oedipus knew that his fate had indeed come to pass and feels cursed by it. Oedipus was guilt, of killing his father and marrying his mother. He punishes himself for the sins he committed by gouging out his eyes. The true sin is when he attempts to raise himself to the level of the gods by trying to escape his fate. Oedipus is accepting the full burden of his acts and knows that he must be punished for his sins. Therefore, this last act of gouging out his eyes was the result of Oedipus’ free will and his tragic fate came about because every sin must

In the beginning of the story, Oedipus is very taken back by the situation. He will not accept the truth of his fate and accuses Tiresias of lying to him so Oedipus’s bother- in- law, Creon, could take the throne. Oedipus is extremely dumbfounded by this news because he had no knowledge of killing his father or marrying his mother, but what he learns later is that who he thought were his parents were not his real parents. When he finally realizes that he did in fact marry his own mother and kill his father, he accepts it and punishes himself in order to uphold his promise to his people. By this point there is no way Oedipus can escape his fate. Tiresias says to Oedipus, “No man in the world can make the gods do more than the gods will” (811). Since he did kill his father, the previous king, Oedipus has to be shunned by all of Thebes. Because there is no way of changing his fate, he accepts his responsibilities by giving himself the punishment he assigned to the murderer of Laius.

This denial causes him to make decisions that only lead to his downfall and further deterioration. He himself leads to his own downfall through his foolish beliefs. To further, Oedipus makes more destructive decisions when he summons the Sheppard to reveal who the murderer of Laius is. Oedipus says, “I must pursue this trail to the end, till I have unraveled the mystery of my birth” (Sophocles, 113), illustrating his mental deterioration considering that this obsession to deny his position as the murderer is consuming his life. Oedipus forces the Sheppard to tell the ill-fated truth and is told: “I hadn’t the heart to destroy it, master” (Sophocles, 118), demonstrating that Oedipus was the cursed baby who was sent to his death, but as fate had planned, Oedipus lived. Not only did he live, he went on to accomplish each revelation the Oracle declared he would. At the end, once the truth has been revealed, Oedipus reaches his breaking point and cannot bear the truth. His mental deterioration from discovering the truth consequently influences him into literally blinding himself, resulting in his downfall. These examples establish how Oedipus’s internal madness played the role of influencing him into believing he could alter the will of the Oracle. He displayed madness when he continuously denied the truth despite the evidence that went against his beliefs. He was blinded by madness into

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

Throughout the play Oedipus is given clues to his past and the fate that is to come, the moment that he gouges his eyes out shows these clues that he has missed. Jocasta says wildly, “In the name of heaven, don’t proceed! For your own life’s sake, stop! And I’ve been tortured long enough.” (59) This shows a moment of caution for Oedipus to not continue to seek the truth. The dramatic irony of this situation illuminates the horrors that are to come because of fate as well as Oedipus’ free will. Oedipus: “Laius was killed—I thought I caught the words—where three highways meet?” Jocasta: “So they said. That is how the story goes.” (41) Oedipus is first hearing the true story of the late king’s murder and seems to be beginning to realize that it was he who did the killing. Even though this could be his illuminating moment, Oedipus is unwilling to accept this fact and must hear

Upon unearthing of the truth of his birth from the shepherd, Oedipus cries out, “O god all come true, all burst to light! O light now let me look my last on you! I stand revealed at last cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands”. (631). Oedipus now knew that his fate had indeed come to pass, and feels cursed by it. Due to the crimes he committed, Oedipus punishes himself (free will) by stabbing his eyes with one of Jocasta’s brooches.

And on the murderer this curse I lay (On him and all the partners in his guilt):-- Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness! And for myself, if with my privity He gain admittance to my hearth, I pray The curse I laid on others fall on me. See that ye give effect to all my heart, For my sake and the god's and for our land A desert blasted by the wrath of heaven. (Sophocles 244-253)

Furthermore, later in the play we have many things happening, with the introduction of the crossroad and the continuation of Oedipus’s arrogance. Firstly, Jocasta recounts the story of how Laius was murdered at a three-way crossroad by some thieves. What is important about the story is not just that Oedipus could be, and is, the murderer, but also that he had a choice. The definition of a crossroad is literally, the crossing of two or more paths. Fate crossed Laius and Oedipus’s paths at the crossroad, but Oedipus was given the opportunity to choose a path. He did not have to fulfill his destiny and kill Laius; he could have chosen an alternative path. Nonetheless, his superciliousness blinded him from handling the situation without violence. Therefore, once again we see how his blindness persists to be the vain of his existence.

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

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

It is said that the truth will set you free, but in the case of Sophocles’ Oedipus, the truth drives a man to imprison himself in a world of darkness by gouging out his eyes. As he scours the city for truth, Oedipus’ ruin is ironically mentioned and foreshadowed in the narrative. With these and other devices Sophocles illuminates the king’s tragic realization and creates a firm emotional bond with the audience.

Oedipus is ashamed of himself and unsatisfied with his situation, even though it is not his fault. The gods wouldn’t have made the prophecies come true without the help of the oracle, which delivered the prophecies to Oedipus’ parents. It is obvious that the gods were planning to this fate before Oedipus’ birth, because through the oracle, they announced the two prophecies while Jocasta was pregnant. Above that, the gods didn’t mention Oedipus’ blindness in their prophecies; but instead, they mentioned only Oedipus’ shameful crimes that involved both the father and the mother. The purpose of this was to make both parents agree to kill their child, for Laius didn’t want to be murdered by his son, and Jocasta didn’t want to marry her son. This fear of terrible destiny led the parents to kill their child. On the other hand, if Laius and Jocasta hadn’t known about the prophecies, they would’ve kept the child, and thus he would know his parents, which makes it impossible for the prophecies to come true.

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

In Oedipus Rex, there is nowhere for Oedipus to go but down. The active, decisive part of his life has already happened and is recounted in the play through flashbacks; now, however, there is nothing Oedipus can do about his own fate. He has already killed his father and had four children with his mother, and there is absolutely no way to change that. For that reason, there is a dreadful sense of the unavoidability of fate. Oedipus' parents tried to get away from it but obviously failed miserably; so did Oedipus. their efforts at tricking fate only succeeded in creating the very circumstances they were trying to avoid. There is really no free will or choice, because in a way, their choices are fated to lead them, in the end, to exactly what they think they are avoiding. The line uttered by Creon, "You can not judge unless you know the facts" (28) is telling. No one can judge correctly unless he has all the information; however, no one in this play has enough information to make a correct choice when it matters. Laius does not know that his son survived, so he thinks he is safe from his fate; in fact, by sending his son away, he deprives Oedipus of true knowledge of who his parents are and thus of the ability to make an effective decision himself about his fate. Without sufficient information, informed judgment is impossible, and this contributes to