Essay on Oedipus Rex's Moral Responsibility

Therefore, he sets himself once again responsible for uncovering the truth about his past. Now Oedipus was seeking justice for himself and for the citizens of Thebes. Oedipus wanted to know who were his biological parents and obtain knowledge about his past and his connection to the murder of King Lauis. After he obtains the identity of his true parents, he realizes that the prophecy the old man told him, “you should kill your father and marry your mother,” had come true. The news of what Oedipus had unconsciously done, impacted those that surrounded him greatly. As a result, Jocasta committed suicide as she realized that she had married her son, and Oedipus chooses to live his life blind as he is exiled from

Robert Anthony once said, "The problem with worry is that we attract the very thing we are trying to avoid." This quote directly relates to the Greek tragedy Oedipus the King by Sophocles. In this play, Sophocles gives Oedipus the tragic flaw, hubris (excessive pride in oneself), which eventually causes him to run into his fate that he wanted to escape.

Oedipus the King is a tragedy that displays irony throughout the play. In the play, King Laius and his wife Jocasta learn that in the prophecy their newborn son, Oedipus, will kill his father and marry his mother. In order to prevent the prophecy from occurring, they decide to bind and tie his ankles and then abandoned him. When Oedipus grew up, he eventually learned about this prophecy and decided to leave his parents. What he did not realize was that the parents who raised him were not his biological parents. On his voyage to Thebes, Oedipus ended up in a chariot accident

Conscience is a sense of what a person believes to be right and wrong. To form a mature conscience, people must communicate with others, that are considered to have moral wisdom, within communities. According to Richard M. Gula in his book Reasons Informed by Faith, “A criterion of a mature moral conscience is the ability to make up one’s mind for oneself about

Oedipus was the King of Thebes who is investigating to find the murder of their friend Lais. The citizens were begging Oedipus to lift the plague and save their city Thebes. Oedipus sent Creon out to try to figure out some deals on the murder of Lais, but little did Oedipus know that he himself killed Lais. If they find the man who murdered Lais this will end the plague. Oedipus then comes to find out that he is one of the suspects of Lais murder. When Oedipus was a young boy, that he is destined to kill his father and marry his own mother Oedipus’s later find out that his father is Lais. His real parents abandoned him, so the shepherd gave Oedipus to Lais and Jocasta. Oedipus then realizes he was the person to kill his father Lais. He also

Because of his commitment to his people and their suffering, he sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to Delphi to see the gods to find out why his city is under such a great plague and what he can do to stop it. Creon returns and says, “… It was murder that brought the plague-wind on the city” and that it was King Laios that was murdered years ago (Prologue, 104-105). Vowing to bring the murderer to justice and being a just King, Oedipus decrees that if the murderer reveals himself he will not be killed, he will be exiled. This determination and tenaciousness was the beginning of the end of King Oedipus.

Conscience, as defined by the Merriam – Webster Dictionary, is “the part of the mind that makes you aware of your actions as being either morally right or wrong”. It’s that tiny voice inside your head that tells you if what you’re about to do, what you’re doing or what you’ve done is essentially right or not. A lot of people nowadays tend to ignore this for fear of being ridiculed or judged by other people, even if what they did was actually right.

Oedipus was clever enough to solve the riddle, and then took on the throne of Thebes. When he began ruling Thebes, Oedipus thought that he had beaten his fate; he thought that his father would live and that he would not marry his mother. Instead, it is revealed to Oedipus that he is really the son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta. When Oedipus was a baby, Laius went to the oracle and his future was revealed to him; his son who would later marry his mother would kill Laius. Perturbed by this, Laius ordered the death of his son, so a shepherd took the baby to a mountain to dispose of the baby, but he couldn’t do it. Instead he gave the baby to a messenger of King Polybus. Oedipus, while trying to avoid his future kills King Laius in self-defense, and then takes on the throne of Thebes. Inadvertently, Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother.

Oedipus begins to suspect that he was the abandoned baby; he killed a man on the road to Thebes, where he met and married Jocasta to become king. Oedipus then tells her of the similar prophesy given to him by an oracle. This is when the reader becomes aware of the tragic irony and shows just how desperate Oedipus and Jocasta don’t want to speak the truth.

Hans Rockwell 8/26/17 Question 1 Question 1.) One of the responses people usually have about Oedipus is if he really deserved the fate that he ended up with. It’s not his fault that Jocasta and Laius tried to outsmart fate and dispose of him.

on as he works through the mystery of his birth. In the Oedipus myth, marriage to Jocasta was the prize for ridding Thebes of the Sphinx. Thus, Oedipus's intelligence, "a trait that brings Oedipus closer to the gods" (Bloom, 54), is what causes him to commit the most heinous of all possible sins - murdering his father, and marrying his mother. In killing the Sphinx, Oedipus is the city's savior, but in killing Laius, he is its scourge, the cause of the blight that has struck the city at the

Conscience is a term that describes an aspect of a human being 's self-awareness. It is part of a person 's internal rational capacity and is not, as popular lore sometimes suggests, an audience room for the voice of God or of the devil. Conscience is a critical inner awareness that bears witness to the norms and values we recognize and apply. The complex of values with which conscience deals includes not only those we own, but the entire range of values to which we are exposed during life 's journey. Consequently, there is always a sense of struggle in our reflective process. The witness of conscience makes its presence known by inducing mental anguish and feelings of guilt when we violate the values we recognize and apply. Conscience also provides a sense of pleasure when we reflect on conformity to our value system.

encounter, Oedipus travels to the city of Thebes, where he solves the great riddle of Sphinx

Consider that the word, conscience, was invented to name a universal human dynamic. In other words, it was obvious that human beings everywhere have some sense of right and wrong, which influences our choices. And so we created a word to identify that phenomenon.

The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘conscience’ as, “a moral sense of right and wrong especially as felt by a person and affecting behaviour (my conscience won’t allow me to do that) [or] an inner feeling as to the goodness or otherwise of one’s behaviour (my conscience is clear; has a guilty conscience)”