Oedipus The King Research Paper

Words: 969
Pages: 4

Pride is Blind
No one can be as poor as the one who cannot see things as they really are. Pride is something intangible, but it truly blinds people and affects them in their lives. In the Greek tragedy “Oedipus of The King” by Sophocles, the author shows readers that through pride, people put themselves in a dangerous position that they can easily fall. Sophocles begins telling a story of a man whose destiny is born to kill his father and marry his mother. Realizing how dangerous it is, his father, Laius, King of the Thebes sends him away with a hope he will never go back. In contrast, the son is saved and named Oedipus. As he grows up, he kills his father on the road and then becomes the King of the Thebes as well as marries his mother. Everything
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When Tiresias is called to the castle, he does not want to tell Oedipus about his fate. However, with his pride, he wants to know everything that Tiresias knows. He tries to mock Tiresias by saying: “ You’ve lost power, stone-blind, stone-deaf-sense, eye blind as stone” (Sophocles 423-424). He mocks Tiresias’s physical blindness, but he does know he is the one who is blind all the time. Even his eyes are full of sight, he is actually a blind man. He is blind from his identity and the truth that he seeks. In the other words, his blindness is more depicted in the article “Oedipus The King by Sophocles Theme of Blindness,” Oedipus is blind when he does not know about the fact that his fate is to kill his father and to marry his mother. He does not about his identity and his fate while the physically blind Tiresias is the one who can actually see the truth. Even Tiresias is blind and cannot see things, but he knows what Oedipus does not know. Oedipus’s pride makes him become a blind man from reality. Thus, Sophocles effectively uses verbal irony to emphasize Oedipus’s pride and …show more content…
When Apollo tells Oedipus: “you must make love with his own mother, shed his father’s blood with his own hands.” this is why he tries to run away from his parents whom he thinks are his biological parents. But he never knows the place he wants to avoid is the place he meets his father and kills him on the road. Oedipus’s fate is a secret that nobody can find it out, but he figures it out with his pride. He forces Tiresias to reveal the truth and inogres the suggestion from Jocasta. As a result, he finally reveals the truth that he kills his father and marries his