Sophocles Oedipus the King

Sophocles Oedipus the King

  • Submitted By: treserra
  • Date Submitted: 02/21/2009 12:34 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 884
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 605

Sophocles

Oedipus the King: Tragedy and Power

Sophocles is a writer, of which this one Oedipus the King is a tragedy. From the opening line where Oedipus speaks these words: “Oh my children, the new blood of ancient Thebes,”. . . I got the impression that this was written by a person who has experienced true tragedy in their own lifetime. Yet, I also felt as if I were listening to a story created from a myth that had been handed down through the ages from parent to child continually. The play appears to present to the reader or viewer with the idea that King Oedipus had a skill of percipience, more so than did others around him.
If one were to look at this play in comparison with Greek mythology one might see the greatness of the Greeks. They loved life, cherished it even, the Greeks appeared to believe in living it to the fullest measure possible. This play is no different; as it takes the character of Oedipus through several stages of confidence in a meandrous way. One gets to see the wandering curves through the thought processes of different types of thinking. Some of those thoughts are characterized by careful and exact evaluation, while others are captious in the way Sophocles wrote them.
This play shows the audience just how imagination plays a part in this play, for if we could not imagine things beyond what we see, hear or read then this particular play probable would have disappeared long ago, but instead it has passed the test of time and gained masterpiece status and will endure many more lifetimes to come. One might wish to ask how a person can arrive at this conclusion only from reading the play from a book, and I would have to say I have concluded this to be so because my own imagination is able to see in the mind’s eye people places and things as I personally perceive them to be just from reading the words off a page.
However, this is not the only reason, I personally have been to the theatre to see somewhere in the high 30’s...

Similar Essays