Oedipus the King: Unrealistic or Realistic Essay -- Oedipus the King

Oedipus Rex Unrealistic or Realistic Lets look the traces of realsim and its opposite in Sophocles tragedy, Oedipus Rex. The first obvious question is How can this drama possibly be considered realistic since it relies so heavily on predetermination and indispensability in the life of the protagonist, Oedipus? As Jocasta recounts to Oedipus An oracle Once came to Laius (I will not say Twas from the Delphic god himself, but from His ministers) declaring he was doomed To perish by the hand of his own son, A child that should be born to him by me. Charles Segal in Oedipus Tyrannus has a solid rebuttal to what appears predestination The issues of destiny, predetermination, and foreknowledge argon raised as problems, not as dogma. How much control do we have over the shape of our lives? How much of what happens to us is due to heredity, to accidents, to sheer luck. . . . These are the questions that the play raises, and it raises them as questions. It shows us men and wom en who are both powerful and helpless, often at the same moment. Oedipus embodies the human check. . . . (75-76). If this critic is correct that Oedipus embodies the human condition as it really is, then he is totally representative of reality, and not unrealistic as it might appear on first reading. Victor Ehrenberg in Sophoclean Rulers Oedipus analyzes the protagonist of the tragedy and finds a balanced, realistic type who possesses the qualities of a king, including the human, realistic desire for more Oedipus is a good king, a father of his people, an honest and capacious ruler, while at the same time an outstanding intellect. . . . He even shares the thro... ...Sophoclean Rulers Oedipus. In Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex, edited by Michael J. OBrien. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt. England Penguin Books, 1972. Segal, Charles. Oedipus Tyrannus Tragic Heroism and the Limits of K nowledge. New York Twayne Publishers, 1993. Sophocles In Literature of the Western World, edited by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. NewYork Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984. Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Transl. by F. Storr. http//etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-mixed new?tag= domain&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&part=0&id=SopOedi Bowra, C. M. Sophocles Use of Mythology. In Readings on Sophocles, edited by Don Nardo. San Diego, CA Greenhaven Press, 1997.