As with all texts we read in Arts One, my interpretation is only as strong as my evidence—like those of students as well. This is to say: I am not arguing that mine is the only way to answer this question, just because I happen to be the instructor in our seminar group. More specifically, what happens is that Oedipus vows, as king, to do what Apollo said in his oracle to Kreon and find the murderer of Laios, and he continues to search and search for the truth until he does.
So we might say that one focus of the play, at least, is on the seeking of knowledge, and gaining self-knowledge. Oedipus is at first treated as a god by the priest in the beginning and Oedipus himself seems to be answering their prayers as if he were a god at the top of p. So we see him not only gaining knowledge and self-knowledge by the end of the play, we see him in the process realizing that he is not at the same level as the gods though, at the end, he knows as much as they do, so do what you will with that ….
Fate is an important factor to life, which cannot be changed or escaped from. Oedipus is the King of Thebes who killed his father and married his mother because of a prophecy. He became king because he saved the city of Thebes by solving the Sphinx riddle. Though others say that Oedipus created his own fate because he had the free will to handle the prophecies in becoming his own outcome, in the end, there was no chance that Oedipus could escape the prophecy.
Ian Scott-Kilvert. New York: Scribner, Harold Bloom. In the beginning of the play, he was "fated" to kill his father and marry his own mother and conceive children with her. Since it was the word of Apollo, the god, to the Greeks it meant that it was unchangeable. Oedipus escaped Corinth, the supposed city of his birth, and ran far away.
He happened upon an old man in the crossroads-a fated event. Though he did not know it at the time, when he killed the man, it turned out to be his own father-a prophecy he was destined by fate to fulfill Elsom, Aeschylus, Agamemnon. Robert Fagles. Modern Critical Interpretations: Hamlet.
Some people might argue that they are still indirectly responsible for the death but apparently the Greeks only considered it bad if you were directly responsible for the act of murder. The problem is that this person never left Oedipus on the mountains as he was instructed to and therefore Oedipus never died. So Iocaste and laios go on living worry free thinking that they outsmarted the gods and avoided their horrible fate, but it will catch up with them soon enough.
They can't change their fate, there is no way to avoid what the gods already decided will happen. No matter what Iocaste and Laios tried to do to avoid their fate the gods would do something to make sure that it didn't change their final fate.
Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. The poet thus sets aside the two plans—of Zeus and of Achilles—and contrives his own narratological plan that defies both. He conjures up a sophisticated nexus of decisions and events in which Patroclus is inextricably enmeshed before dying as a double of Meleager; [ 55 ] and, in dying, Patroclus mobilizes the inactive Achilles, who can now return to battle with his honor fully restored, and brings about the micro-perspective of the end of the Iliad and the macro-perspective of the fall of Troy.
It derives from narrative, from the representation of causal continuity in time. It is, I believe, less accurate to say that a narrative represents a prophecy than to say that prophecy represents the narrative, and does so by pre-presenting it, the frame paradoxically embedded in what it frames.
My argument thus far has depicted Oedipus as a conscious human agent and a strong evaluator who takes full responsibility for his actions. The self-blinding is the conscious attempt to mutilate his sight, rendering the socially constructed way of seeing and being seen impossible; he cannot endure the gaze of the others, be it his family or his fellow citizens.
At the same time, he cannot endure the complete change of his own gaze. The superiority of a socially accepted benign king is forever destroyed, for he can no longer command respect in the public space. Oedipus has been transfigured from a respected king into a social outcast. In the actions of seeing and being seen, his transgressions and the ensuing public shame will be constantly re-enacted. The decision to blind himself is truly his own. It remains to be seen how a person, such as the Sophoclean Oedipus, can act freely as a human agent and exert his own will in the context of the entire tragedy from within the circumscribed confines of his story given by the tradition.
This will be addressed in the next section by revisiting the influential article of J. Sophocles has produced a play where he confronts the ultimate challenge of depicting a person with strength of will and remarkable determination despite the inflexible confines of the tradition that engendered his story.
In what follows, I suggest a different perspective for interpreting the divine and human actions in Oedipus Tyrannus. Seductive as this idea might be, it is the first point to attract my criticism. As I proceed to discuss the notion of the self as a non-fragmented individual, well established by the fifth century BCE which, to my mind, should be considered as the foundation upon which Greek tragedy is formed , many collateral, but significant, issues will emerge and be tackled.
However, as the scholar remarks: … the will is not a datum of human nature. It is a complex construction whose history appears to be as difficult, multiple, and incomplete as that of the self, of which it is to a great extent an integral part. We must therefore beware of projecting onto the ancient Greeks our own contemporary system for organizing the modes of behavior involving the will, the structures of our own processes of decision and our own models of the commitment of the self in the action.
In this sense the mortal is not the author in the full sense of the term, [ 77 ] and the crime becomes objective. This tangible intervention of the divine needs a well-established mortal foundation in order to materialize. However, one major aspect of human dependence or independence, in relation to the divine, needs clarification before constructing a persuasive argument regarding the notion of the will.
Along with Vernant, who raises questions arising from the notions of will and the related notions of agency, intention, volition, and the like , we should note that the notion of the will is highly problematic let alone the notion of a free will when used before the Stoics, and consequently its use should be redefined in the context of Greek tragedy. When we, like Vernant, turn to Aristotle for enlightenment, [ 85 ] we realize, with the guidance of Michael Frede, [ 86 ] that the philosopher did not have a notion of the will, for he lacked the appropriate notion of choice in the way that a modern person would understand it.
In the Aristotelian view, there are regularities in this world that dictate a course of action. Not only in Greek tragedy, but in our own times as well, the notion of free will is precarious. John Hyman, a contemporary philosopher, questions the notion of the will altogether in antiquity, as well as in modernity and postmodernity , following a long line of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers who have also criticized this idea.
It is also helpful because we realize that it is rather the notions of the self and of human agency that we should touch on if we want to understand the individual in tragedy. In the following pages, I shall be concerned with the notion of the self and the subjective responsibility connected with the action of the autonomous individual, thus extending my analysis in chapter 3.
Exploring the boundaries of the action of a human agent will help us understand where, I argue, the focus of the Sophoclean treatment of the Oedipus story is placed.
The Athenians wished to have an independent polis not adherent to Sparta; they also refused to think of themselves to imagine themselves, in Castoriadian terminology as clients to local aristocrats, nor did they tolerate tyranny. The political praxis during the turbulent years between BCE the abolition of tyranny and BCE the Athenian Revolution and the ensuing Cleisthenian reforms marks the autonomy of a collectivity in the process of developing strong ties between its members and, undoubtedly, creating a new civic identity.
This civic identity, which marks the interconnection and interdependence between the individual subjectivity and the collective character of the Athenians, has been examined in chapter 3. I will only remind the reader here that a marked trait of the self in the polis is the accountability of the individuals to their community.
Fragmenting and reassembling the body politic, Cleisthenes lays the foundation for a system that sees the common traits binding the citizens together behind the multiformity and multiplicity of region, social class, wealth, education, political beliefs, and aspirations.
Each new Cleisthenian tribe is living proof of the new ideology of working together and of being together in making polities—in various rituals, festivals, and dances for the city, as well as in battle and in collective burial.
The Athenians spent most of their adult lives as members of their political tribe, as political beings. To my mind, this new powerful civic self is strongly represented in Attic tragedy, where the deliberations of those on stage, whether protagonists or the members of the chorus, refer to the wide range of issues associated with this very identity, as I argued earlier in this book.
I cannot see anything fragmentary or incomplete in Greek tragedy; [ ] on the contrary, fierce debates, strong opinions, and immovable attitudes are the material out of which tragedy is made. Vernant contended, however, that in tragedy the transition between the older forms of moral action and the self and the new innovations are not clearly demarcated [ ] because of an incomplete process.
This view of cultural history is no longer adequate, which constitutes the second parameter of the critique that I bring to the discussion. At any given moment in a human society, structures intellectual, ethical, emotional, behavioral, and so on exist as a synthesis of various strata, where the old and new exist synchronically in varying proportions and relations.
Consequently, I consider as fallacious and an easy way out any idea that the existence of the gods and their oracles dominate, dictate, and predetermine the thoughts and actions of the characters in a dramatic play; an idea prevalent among laymen and scholars alike. When it comes to Greek literature, nowhere do we find fiercer debates between the dramatic personae employing rational argumentation with a clearer view of the world and their position within it than in Greek tragedy.
The comportment of the persons shows a clear evaluation of their position and the possibilities open to them, calculation of how to achieve aims, the making of choices, and the plans and strategies that constitute the essential components of agency and self. Most of us human beings in the twenty-first century CE with a well-established notion of the self have found ourselves in similar situations where our evaluation of our lives—and our choice-making—has led to mis-planning because of deficient data.
However, these actions, no matter how important, are not, on their own, enough to make him a moral agent. In the way that Sophocles handles the story of Oedipus, I can see no fatalistic or deterministic or divinely bound action, but I can see a vital agent, a subject with a strong notion of himself when evaluating, calculating, deciding, planning, and measuring up his actions against highly moral standards.
In this sense, the action of self-blinding—which is, admittedly, a choice with a will—encapsulates all his previous actions. To ease the minds of modern readers regarding these constraints be they the gods, necessity, or fate , we should bear in mind that it is in our own society that we no longer conjoin religious faith with belief in prophecy; but this was not the case in the ancient world, whether pagan or Christian.
Do they point to the individuality of Oedipus and relate to his ethical dimension? From that perspective, the notion of identity for which I have argued throughout the present chapter emerges: what is to be Oedipus?
Contrary to the theories that see in him a tyrannical disposition, [ ] he is a good king, commanding approval and respect from the people of Thebes; and this reflects the line of conduct that he has pursued throughout his life, despite the lamentable outcome of the series of revelations that have constructed the new narrative of his life.
I conclude this excursus into the pressing and contentious issue of human agency and the subjective individuality that is embedded in the tragic situation in Oedipus Tyrannus as is in most Greek tragedies by stating that Oedipus is nowhere powerless in the hands of his gods, despite the renowned constraints to his life.
In Oedipus Tyrannus the struggle of the individual in articulating his reasoning while rationally debating his position in this world, and notably in the quest for his identity, emerges with great clarity. He commits crimes in ignorance agnoia , for which he alone is responsible to the extent that he does not understand the signs of his identity which are intentionally blurred. In a contemporary court of law he would have been absolved.
He uses all his intellectual powers to understand and act according to a set of values that constitute a life worth living.
He is a strong evaluator and a moral agent because what he does, he does with courage, intelligence, and determination. He confronts all the constraints of his life with the utmost fortitude. If at the end he falls, he does so with his immense dignity intact.
Segal ; Edmunds n See also chapter 4. Taylor Salzman-Mitchell Mary Devereaux, as cited by Salzman—Mitchell Pages 1—22 of the English translation.
Of course, the petrifying gaze of the Gorgon is also much explored in contemporary scholarship. Revermann — Salzman—Mitchell I transfer the meaning from the gender power relations to which the quote refers, to power relations in general.
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