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Pride In Oedipus The King And Antigone

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Is excess the enemy of success? Historical examples and the characters Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Antigone demonstrate that this is the case. In World War II era Japan, pride made their army strong, but eventually destroyed it due to the soldiers’ refusal to surrender even in the face of imminent defeat. In Hitler’s Germany, loyalty originally made the nation strong and rebuilt the economy, but eventually caused that same nation to look away while their leader committed heinous acts. Parallels can be drawn between these historical examples and the characters Oedipus and Antigone, who each experience a fall from grace due to their tragic flaws, excess pride and blind loyalty respectively. Sophocles uses Oedipus’ and Antigone’s tragic flaws to …show more content…

Japan bombed pearl harbor on December 7, 1941. The bombs destroyed U.S. ships and killed many Americans, causing Congress to declare war on Japan and the other Axis powers (Holt McDougal 497). Iwo Jima and the Battle of Okinawa, two important battles that the U.S. fought against Japan, led to huge loss of life due to the Japanese principle that it was “dishonorable to surrender” (Holt McDougal 498). The Japanese soldiers preferred death rather than capture and dishonor even when it was evident that victory for them was impossible. One tactic that shows the extent to which the Japanese went in order to die an honorable death was the kamikaze attacks. These suicide bombers would volunteer to deliberately fly planes into Allied ships in order to damage them and kill the men on board. As a result of the huge casualties at Iwo Jima and the Battle of Okinawa due to the Japanese’s refusal to surrender under any circumstances, the Allies believed that invading the mainland of Japan would result in a great loss of life. The Allies did not want this, so they decided to drop an atomic bomb on Japan in order to prevent the need for ground troops and hopefully end the war quickly and with less loss of life. Even after the U.S. dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima, Japan did not immediately surrender. They had so much pride and loyalty to their country that not even a bomb more destructive than anything the world had ever seen before could force them to give up. They preferred to die honorably while fighting than surrender to the allies with their lives intact. Then, after the U.S. dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki, Japan waited almost a week to surrender. The Japanese people’s excess honor, pride, and loyalty, which are usually admirable qualities, brought death and the destruction of two major cities to

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