An author’s first ingredient in making a good play or short story is their characters. Characters are essential to the ending result in a successful story. All different authors choose to characterize their characters using many different techniques. Sophocles and Susan Glaspell are two great examples of characterization in plays that have been captivating to readers. Both authors have the similar technique where as they would insinuate their main characters to be important and crucial to the story yet, in the long run, the small meaningless characters end up having the biggest impact on the story itself. Such examples of their work are “Kind Oedipus” from Sophocles and “Trifles” from Susan Glaspell.
Even though Sophocles was living in a different time and wrote “King Oedipus” in 429 B.C. his style of writing has always been recognized. Sophocles chose to make the readers assume that the main character in “King Oedipus” is King Oedipus, as well as other main characters. No one expects the smallest characters such as the messenger and the herdsman to play such important roles in “King Oedipus.” “King Oedipus” involves numerous characters where the reader’s would classify to themselves which character is essential to the story and which is not. As the play goes on, the author constructs conflict and readers assume that in order to solve conflicts, the “main characters” will be crucial at this point. The messenger and the herdsman are the smallest characters in this play, yet when the conflict is stirring around, the messenger and the herdsman are the ones that become the last pieces of the puzzle. Sophocles use of characterization makes the readers contemplate exactly what they are reading. The author purposely chose King Oedipus as the title of the story to insinuate Oedipus playing the most important role, yet ironically King Oedipus is actually the most innocent character and the little characters are...
ll wrote. It’s almost one hundred years old, and while...