Comparing the Oedipus of Sophocles and Senaca :: comparison compare contrast essays

Comparing the Oedipus of Sophocles and Senaca The myth of Oedipus is integrity of a man brought charge by forces aligning against him. Over the years, different playwrights have interpreted his fibre in various fashions. In Sophocles Oedipus the big businessman, Oedipus is a man who is blind to the running on which his questions take him and exemplifies the typical tyrannical leader in antediluvian patriarch times in Senacas Oedipus, it is the fear of his questions that give Oedipus a great depth of character, a depth he must overcome if he is to survive his or visual modality. Sophocles creates a character of extreme wrath and ferocity to deal with the source of the blight on the city. He curses out the killer of King Laius, the killer who has brought the blight. Upon the murderer I invoke this curse whether he is integrity man and solely unknown or one of many whitethorn he wear out if life in misery and sentence If with my knowledge he lives at my hearth I pray that I myself feel my curse. On you I lay my charge to fulfill all of this for me, for the God, and for this land of our destroyed and blighted, by the God forsaken (Soph. O.T. 245-254). When it is suggested that Oedipus himself could be the source of the plague, his indignation emerges in full force. (Truth has strength,) but not for you (Teiresias) it has no strength for you because you ar blind in mind and ears as well as in your eyes (Soph. O.T. 370-371). The Oedipus of Senacas play is not nearly so rash. He seems to dread what will come from his exploration into the death of Laius, even though the condition of his city is just as terrible as that of Sophocles. I shudder, wondering which way fate will steer. My shaky mood could flicker either way. When joys and griefs so close together lie, the mind is doubtful. How much should one see? How much is best to know? Im equivocal (Sen. Oed. 204-208). This Oedipus even has thoughts that the plague mightiness have something to do with him, that his rule might be the pollution that has descended upon the city (Sen. Oed. 40). It is this anxiety that Seneca wishes to bring out in his play, one of the emotions that are the downfall of man.