Oedipus The King Justice And Injustice Essay

Oedipus is one character who responds to injustice from the “Oedipus Plays,” particularly in “Oedipus Rex.” The plague is put on his kingdom due to the death of the King. He did this response to this injustice by going on a journey to discover the truth and lift the curse from the city of Thebes. Oedipus is appalled by the injustice occurring, and succeeds on his journey for justice which was highly significant.

   Oedipus Rex and King Lear are, as their titles announce, both about kings. These two plays are similar in theme and in the questions they pose to the audience. The kings in each play both fall from the pinnacle of power to become the most loathed of all classes in society; Oedipus discovers that he is a murderer and committer of incest, and Lear becomes a mad beggar. Misjudgments occur in both plays, and the same questions about the gods, fate, and free will are posed. In spite of these similarities, however, the final effects of these two plays differ greatly.

In the story of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus is the protagonist and he demonstrates a very amazing character. When it comes to justice or injustice to Oedipus he seems to lean towards justice. The king of Thebes, Oedipus, portrays his justice in different manners.

The pursuit of justice is an endeavor that many find to be challenging and a quest itself, as one will come across various trials and complications that may stop them in their pursuit or may mislead them. As humans, we find moral correctness and righteousness a very appealing state to be in, as justice will act as a platform to satisfy the desire for this correctness. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, we meet our miserable anti-hero, Oedipus, in his pursuit for truth and righting the wrong of the plague that is affecting his people of Thebes. As he makes efforts to solve this problem, he comes to find out that he is the source of the issue, thus exposing the tragic flaw of Oedipus and effectively making this play a very effective Greek tragedy. This pursuit of righteousness ends up being the downfall of Oedipus. In Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, Oedipus pursues justice through his realization of his past, his interactions with various characters in the play, and comes to understand more of justice in his situation through his reactions to adversity in this play, in order to portray a questionably successful pursuit of justice.

Oedipus’ pride, drawn from his own heroic qualities, is one factor of his ruining. A hero characteristically prizes above all else his honor and the excellence of his life. When his honor

There are many plays that show the concept of justice. The play “Oedipus Rex” shows justice in a different way than the other plays. Everyone is aware that Oedipus was looking for the killer of Laius, the king before him, and promised to force the killer out the city in order for the people to consider him a serious person. The people of Thebes wanted justice for the previous king, and Oedipus promise would ensure that justice. The part that makes this play’s justice from the others is that Oedipus was the killer, so technically he was asking himself for justice. As soon as he finds out he

In the play, “Oedipus Rex”, many ironies took place, as well as fate playing a huge part in the story. “Oedipus Rex” is a story about a man that tries to overcome adversity but cannot escape his prophecy. His parents took him to a hillside as an infant, sliced his Achilles tendons and left him there. A shepherd soon came to his rescue. “King and Queen of Thebes, gave their infant to a shepherd in with orders that he be left on the side of the mountainside to die” (Johnson 1205). As he grew older and much wiser, he went to see the Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle informed him that his destiny was to kill his father and marry his mother. The main ironies in the play are the killing of Oedipus’s biological father, the odd relationship with his mother, and the inability of Oedipus to avoid his fate.

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

Just like The Kite Runner, in Oedipus Rex a theme of betrayal is portrayed. The main character, Oedipus, kills his own father in the beginning of the tragedy. Not only is killing someone you are close to considered a huge act of betrayal, but killing your own father is just one of the most ultimate acts of betrayal one can produce. Since Oedipus Rex is a short play, any action can be major and play a big part in the mood of the work. The killing of his own father happens right in the beginning and still occurs to be the major event in the play which causes the theme of betrayal to be prevalent throughout the whole thing. As the play comes to an end, Oedipus ends up finding out about his father and mother. Even at the end, Oedipus ends up betraying himself. He stabs his own eyes out after realizing all the horrible things he has done. “He lifted them and struck the sockets of his own eyes, shouting

Oedipus is in a constant struggle with the situation of determining the murderer of the King of Thebes. The death of the King has marked the plaque and sickness of the kingdom, and the only way to remove it is to remove the King’s murderer from the kingdom. In Oedipus Rex there is a noticeable change in Oedipus throughout the play during these harsh times which would greatly change everything about him which starts with him being noble and smart, then being ignorant and thinks he is smarter than everyone else, and then when he figures out his past. Oedipus was once a helpful man who had always stood up for the people of his kingdom; to resolve any issues that may arise to harm any innocent person.

The play starts with an important piece of cultural information in the form of the quote “I thought it wrong, my children, to hear the truth from others, messengers. Here I am myself—you all know me, the world knows my fame: I am Oedipus” (1, Fagels). This quote shows how the story of Oedipus did not originate with Shophicles but is deeply enrooted in ancient Greek culture by oral repetition of the classic myth. The most apparent character carried themes are those carried by the protagonist Oedipus. Throughout the play Oedipus shows that one must maintain ignorance to also be happy and that one’s fate will also prevail. Both these themes are deeply rooted into Greek culture.

     The heart of the story unravels when Oedipus apparently begins to suffer a reversal of fortunes. At the beginning of the play, Oedipus is referred to by the priest as the “king of the land, [the city of Thebes’] greatest power” (16). Through all of Thebes he is thought of as a hero, a man who saved the city from the Sphinx and in his bravery has promised to find the killer of King Laius in order to save the city from doom and death. However, at the climax of the story Oedipus learns that he has been “cursed in [his] birth, cursed in marriage / and cursed in

injustice is one of the many thing that humans despise about of the journey of life. It is something that cnnot be avoided, but in some ocassions desperate people tend tonfind their own justice in a worls full of injustice. In the case of Oedipus Rex, he is born into a prophecy with many flaws. He grows up not knowing the prophecy until one day the truth is revealed to him. From that day forward injustice takes part of his life.

The biggest and most fascinating irony in "Oedipus Rex" was the king's commitment and persistence in finding and punishing Laïos' murderer, ignoring the fact that the killer was

Murray’s appreciation of the “crescendo of tragedy” in Oedipus Rex is echoed in the sentiments of another critic: In Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge, Charles Segal says that the protagonist fares well in the first series of tests, but declines towards his catastrophe in the second series: