Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Reason vs. Rashness
"Oedipus lacks reason throughout the play.
He is a stubborn individual; he will not give up the search for truth. He is
too dense to understand that when Jocasta tells Oedipus to stop the quest for
knowledge in his origins, he believes that it is because of social class." Why is this significant to the play as a whole?
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Jocasta does not want him to know what really happen because it will hurt him. The reason for that is because like how Oedipus prophet is to kill his father and marry his mother. If he finds out about this, bad stuff will happen. If he never knew about the truth, the city will just be cursed with the plaque that was sent upon the gods until the killer of Laios. So therefore making it both a good and bad reason what might happen if Oedipus know the facts of what happened.
ReplyDeleteThe way this contributes to the play as a whole is because of the words fate and prophecy. Since Oedipus prophecy was to kill his father and marry his mother which actually happened. But the reason Oedipus thinks Jocasta is telling him not to do this is because of social class reason since they are like the ones on top of the class pyramid. Investigating the murder of the lord should not be part of anyone’s job who is high in the social class. Since Jocasta already knows that the prophecy has already been fulfilled, she does not want any more bad things to happen because she thinks is her fault for not listening to the gods and having a baby.
sorry if there a repeating of certain CDs and its kind of broken
DeleteI think that you have given a good amount of context here but not truly adressed how all the information related to Oedipus being dense, so what. Although the context and facts are all good you don't answer how it relates to the work as a whole. I think that it relates to work as a whole because if Oedipus has just taken the time to make sure of what Jocasta was saying he could have avoided all of the tragedy. He dug his own grave by not seeing reason and not looking ahead to see possible bad side effects.
DeleteI dont think it sometimes really matter because you got to remember the first reason why Oedipus wanted to find the killer of laios
DeleteIt is often said that curiosity killed the cat. In this case, the Oedipus' relentless search into uncovering the killer ultimately led to his demise. Due to Oedipus' social class, he becomes too dense and self centered, thinking he is always right. As a king, Oedipus somewhat becomes even more egotistic as he became more recognized and famous throughout the city. With this being said, women were also seen as unequals to men back then, as this was long ago in B.C in athens where women were known to be treated differently in society. This could have been put into the story as Oedipus, a well known King, may have seen Jocasta inferior and therefore see her ideas as naive. This lack of trusting others advice inevitably leads to Oedipus' downfall as a man and role model to society, and ultimately leads him to blinding himself and self exiling himself.
ReplyDeleteI agree that curiosity killed the cat and I see why you might think he's dense and self-centered. However, I wouldn't say that he was dense or self-centered because in my opinion he was just blinded. On the other hand, I do agree that it was his ego that led to his downfall.I also see why you would think that this was because Jocasta was inferior. However, I would say again that he was just blinded by the excitement of getting close to his goal.
Delete“Oedipus lacks reason throughout the play.” This is true because in the play he doesn’t listen to Teiresias, Kreon, or Jocasta. This is significant to the play because these people know what’s going on and they’re hinting the truth, but Oedipus interprets it incorrectly. This adds to the dramatic irony because readers know that he’ll find out, but he won’t reason with the hints in order to find out. “He is a stubborn individual; he will not give up the search for truth.” This is true because he’s so focused on the truth that even when Jocasta says stop, he keeps going. This adds to the tragic irony because Jocasta as a mother fails to protect her son, and in Oedipus’s perspective he thinks he’s doing right. “He is too dense to understand that when Jocasta tells Oedipus to stop the quest for knowledge in his origins, he believes that it is because of social class.” This also adds to the tragic irony because he thinks he started from low and got to high class by himself, when the actual situation was that he was always high class, but he brought himself down to low class. All because he didn’t reason with what Teiresias, Kreon, or what Jocasta said.
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