Essay on Oedipus Rex

Essay on Oedipus Rex

The pride of the mighty through King Oedipus

King Oedipus It is a Greek tragedy written at an unknown date in antiquity by the tragic poet Sophocles (496-406 BC). C.), and which is among the most studied and most performed theatrical works of all time. Although there is more than one reason for this, given the enormous importance of tradition Greco-Roman in the conformation of Western culture, in this essay we will focus on a very specific reason: its representation of the hybris, that is, the pride, and its role in the punishment of the powerful.

The ancient Greeks knew the hybris ("Pride", "excess") long before the first Christians could speak of the sin of pride. And although the Greek was not a culture of "sin" but of honor, the hybris usually it was what led his mythological heroes to a tragic destiny, that is, to a situation in which the gods were in charge to remind him, the hard way, that no matter how talented, how strong, or how skilled he was with a sword, he was nothing more than a human. Examples abound: Ajax's proud contempt for feeling Athena's protection, or Achilles' refusal to treat Hector's body with respect.

In the case of Oedipus, however, pride is also linked to the exercise of political power. And not only because at the beginning of the work Oedipus is already the king of Thebes, but precisely because his fall begins when he wields the law: when he mocks the enigmas of the seer Tiresias and announces to the Theban people that he will not rest until he finds the murderer of Laius, the previous king, and makes him pay for such a crime. A murderer who, as we know, will end up being himself.

The ancient Greeks understood human existence always at the mercy of a destiny already written. That is why one might think that when Oedipus flees from his foster home to avoid fulfilling the prophecy made to him at birth, and he ends up precisely fulfilling it, he was also committing the pride of thinking that a man can contradict destiny.

But in this case, Oedipus is protected by innocence and by the love that he feels towards his putative parents; a love that makes unthinkable some context or some situation in which he could kill his father and marry his mother, but even so his fear of his fate is such that he escapes back to his Thebes native. It is a case of tragic irony.

Instead, the Oedipus Rex (not coincidentally said in original Greek Oidipous Tyrannos) boasts so much of the power he has received after liberating Thebes from the sphinx, that he considers his own infallible judgments. It is not otherwise explained that he mocks Tiresias's blindness, to which the seer will reply, prophetically, that the The true blind man is Oedipus, since he builds the trap into which he himself will later fall, when the truth is revealed.

The hybris of Oedipus, therefore, is the hybris of a king, and constitutes a powerful warning to future generations, educated through the theater in the agora: the law of the powerful can be turned against him and, therefore, any exercise of power would have to be done wisely and prudence. The punishment of Oedipus is not only the loss of power so longed for, but the shame of having to submit to the punishment itself, that is, exile.

Thus, after Jocasta's suicide, he gouges out his own eyes with his hair clips (thus fully complying with the words of Tiresias) and begins a wandering existence after cursing his own lineage, for which several more tragedies still await ahead. Oedipus goes from king to beggar, from proud sage to humble preacher, leaving the throne in the hands of his brother-in-law Creon, just as they have done. numerous kings throughout history, who have wielded power to forge a society in which, subsequently, they have no room. And this is a lesson that also seems to never go out of style.

References:

• "Essay" in WIkipedia.
• "Oedipus Rex" in Wikipedia.
• "The myth of Oedipus in the western cultured tradition and its interpretations" by Juan José Prat Ferrer in the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library.
• "Fate, Family, and Oedipus Rex: Crash Course Literature 2022" (video) in CrashCourse.
• "Oedipus Rex" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

What is an essay?

The test it's a literary genre, whose text is characterized by being written in prose and by addressing a specific topic freely, making use of the arguments and the author's appreciations, as well as the literary and poetic resources that make it possible to embellish the work and enhance its aesthetic features. It is considered a genre born in the European Renaissance, fruit, above all, from the pen of the French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), and that over the centuries it has become the most frequent format to express ideas in a structured, didactic and formal.

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