Olympian Destiny vs. Personal Choice Essay Example for Free

Olympian Destiny vs. Personal Choice Essay An Analytical Essay on the Tragedy of Oedipus in Sophocles’ â€Å"Oedipus the King† Debates on whether men control their fates or whether their fates are already dictated by another force are not new and has definitely not ended. Still, even if arguments on the subject has been exhaustingly discussed, there is still no conclusion formed of whether humanity really make their own choices or if there is a greater or heavenly force which deprives humanity of that choice. Such circumstance is depicted in Oedipus the King, one of the trilogies in a famous Greek tragedian’s plays. Sophocles, who is known to be one of the pioneers of tragedies (as a drama) in the world, writes of the sad and terrible fate of Oedipus who is the ruler of Thebes after he saves the people of Thebes from a â€Å"monster†. The play revolves around a prophecy that Oedipus wants to kill his own father and make his own mother as a wife. This leads to this essay’s purpose which is to discuss on whether Oedipus was destined to have such end or whether he was the one who actually made his own fate. In Oedipus the King, trouble brews in Thebes as the people are in pandemonium over a sickness that spreads over the city. Oedipus who is the present ruler of the city after defeating the Sphinx asks help from an oracle to decipher why Thebes if suffering such fate. The oracle reveals that Olympus is angry over the murder of Thebes’ past King and the city can only be restored to its proper order when the King’s murderer has been caught. This rather ominous scene sets the play in motion as the court of Thebes starts to investigate and prod on who is the possible murderer of the dead King. Through much explanation, interrogation and prodding, it is found out that it is Oedipus himself who has killed the King, making the prophecy of Apollo true—that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his own mother. Because Thebes needs to be saved and because Creon cries out for Oedipus to respect the desires of Olympus, Oedipus willingly exiles himself from Thebes and eventually (in the next and last part of the trilogy, Oedipus at Colonus) dies alone. The trilogy that Sophocles has written is known to be the Oedipus plays even if one of the plays played out with the King already dead. However, it is quite evident that in all the plays, Oedipus plays an important part because his fate serves as background of all the plays and his fate becomes a catalyst for all the other scenes in the plot. This fate that brings down such grief to Oedipus and his family is connected to Apollo’s prophecy that was predicted by an oracle in Delphi. Oedipus recounts this prophecy when he talks to Jocasta, his queen and wife (and unbeknownst to him, his mother) over the reason why he self-exiled himself from Corinth: And so I went in secret off to Delphi. / I didn’t tell my mother or my father. Apollo sent me back without an answer, / so I didn’t learn what I had come to find. But when he spoke he uttered monstrous things, / strange terrors and horrific miseries— it was my fate to defile my mother’s bed, / to bring forth to men a human family that people could not bear to look upon, / to murder the father who engendered me. (Sophocles 945-954) This excerpt points to the fact that it is Apollo who passed the knowledge of the prophecy and Oedipus is well aware of the said prophecy. Thus, it would seem that the fate of Oedipus is already determined but there is a possibility that although he made unconscious and innocent choices and decisions, Oedipus is still well aware that all the things that he will do leads to something greater and sadder. This something greater and sadder is his tragic fate that would result in the death of his own father and would result in an immoral relationship with his own mother. This premise neither proves nor negates whether Oedipus’s life was created out of the decisions, actions and choices he made or whether his life was already created by another force for him. Both arguments may be correct but the other holds more weight based on the text itself. With regards to the tragedy of Oedipus’ fate created by his own choice, it can be shown in how the Chorus of the play described Oedipus that he was a man who had his own power from his mental strength which resulted in his ability to be very cunning: You residents of Thebes, our native land, / look on this man, this Oedipus, the one who understood that celebrated riddle. / He was the most powerful of men. All citizens who witnessed this man’s wealth / were envious. Now what a surging tide of terrible disaster sweeps around him. (Sophocles 1805–1811) The Chorus described Oedipus as having feats that he alone did without the help of any other force or power—this would of course show that Oedipus’ total worth as a character and individual was not just created by the Olympian gods alone. Oedipus also had a hand in the making of his own totality as a person. Thus, his characteristics which lead to his â€Å"crimes† were the culmination of all these characteristics. For example, he is cunning and that is why he was able to defeat his father in battle and he was able to solve the Sphinx’s riddle. Because of these two circumstances, he killed his father and he won the queen of the city who is his mother. Apollo merely prophesised Oedipus’ fate—the sun god did not provide the weapon which would kill Oedipus nor did he provide the answer to the riddle. Thus, Oedipus was able to the things he has done based on his own judgement and discernment as a person. On the other hand, the premise that Oedipus is the victim of the tragedy of fate manufactured by the Olympian gods still holds more weight compared to whether he is a victim of his own misplaced judgements and actions. This can be proven by the following lines delivered by the Chorus of the play: In everything / our loftiest traditions consecrate, those laws engendered in the heavenly skies, / whose only father is Olympus. They were not born from mortal men, / nor will they sleep and be forgotten. In them lives an ageless mighty god. (Sophocles 1034-1040) The lines explain that men’s laws and the traditions that they exalt, whether good or bad and advantageous or remiss, is created by the heavens. Therefore, men are but putty in the hands of the gods and goddesses of Olympus. Whatever human beings do, it is determined already by the hands of the gods. If this supposition is correct, it just means that Oedipus’ entire life was created by the gods and it is up to the gods on how his life will end; even if the Queen Jocasta believes otherwise: â€Å"Fear? What should a man fear? It’s all chance, chance rules our lives. Not a man on earth can see a day ahead, groping through the dark. Better to live at random, best we can† (Sophocles 1068–1078). When the queen declared such judgement, she was not able to consider that even if chance rules humanity’s lives; chance is also something which the heavens also control. Though men make decisions in certain circumstances, those circumstances were also created by pre-determined fate: Oedipus had to be there at the exact same time his father was at the crossroads; Oedipus had to take the path going to Thebes; Oedipus had to solve the riddle by the Sphinx, etc. Thus, although Oedipus can make his own decisions which lead to his tragic fate, his tragic fate was already determined by his hands not his own. It was determined, based on the Greek mythologies, by the Fates. Works Cited Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Ontario: General Publishing, Ltd. , 1991.

Henrik Isbens A Dolls House Essay -- A Dolls House Essays

Nora is a captivating character in Ibsen's A Doll's House. She swings between extremes: she is either very happy or immensely depressed, prosperous or completely desperate, wise or naive, impotent or purposeful. You can understand this range in Nora, because she staggers between the person she pretends to be and the one she someday hopes to become. Throughout the play, Nora is portrayed as subordinate to her male counterpart, Torvald. As most other men during this time, Torvald believed that women were not capable of making difficult decisions, or thinking for themselves. As the play progresses, Nora faces a life changing decision to abandon her duty as a wife and mother to find her own individuality. Even though Torvald is responsible for partial deterioration in their marriage, it is Nora's feministic beliefs, passion for life, thoughtlessness, and spontaneity that stimulate her ultimate plan to break away and shatter all that remained pleasant in Torvald's â€Å"perfect little d ollhouse†. Nora, the protagonist, has been treated as a "play thing" by her father and then her husband, Torvald. She is thought to be fragile and incapable of resolving any serious problems. The pet names like â€Å"lark†, â€Å"squirrel†, and â€Å"songbird† (pg.27) further diminish her status. He also neglected to give significance to her job as a homemaker. Yet her compassion and intelligence must be masked by her childish and supplicating behavior due to the expectations of her society. At the beginning of the play, Nora is still a child in many ways, listening at doors and guiltily eating forbidden sweets (macaroons) behind her husband's back. She has gone straight from her father's house to her husband's, bringing along her nursemaid to emphasize the fact that she's never been on her own. She's also never gained a sense of self. She's always accepted her father's and her husband's opinions. And she's aware that Torvald would have no use for a wife who was his equal. So she would act like a child and manipulate Torvald by pouting or by performing for him. She uses her own being as a lure for the things she wants in life. Her drive to reach her goals are far more powerful than her desire to care for the family, and life, that she created. When her secret is revealed, the reality of her status in their marriage awakens her. A... ... been reversed: he is the weak one, begging for another chance, and Nora has found strength. This notion suggested that ideas of male supremacy and middle-class respectability were changing. More female were feeling liberated enough to escape their boundaries and move on to more fulfilling lives. Your greatest duty is to understand yourself. At the beginning of the play, Nora doesn't realize she has a self. She's playing a role. The purpose of her life is to please Torvald or her father, and to raise her children. But by the end of Act Three their roles have been reversed: he is the weak one, begging for another chance, and Nora has found strength. â€Å"I have it in me to become another man† (pg.70), he exclaims as he pleads for another chance. She replies with thoughtlessness to anyone's feelings but her own by telling him that neither he nor their children were allowed to write to her. By the end of the play, she discovers that her "most sacred duty"(pg.68), is to herself. She leaves to find out who she is and how she can become gratified with her life. The sound of the door shutting as Nora leaves Torvald (pg.72) exemplifies the end of her role as his beloved â€Å"doll† wife.

Reading Father and I

Reading Father and I by Par Lagerkvist with Narrative and Culture Repetition One of the claims that J. Hillis Miller make in his essay Narrative, has to do with repetition and its relationship with enjoyment. Miller points out â€Å"We enjoy imitation. For one thing imitations are rhythmic, orderly and it is natural for us to take pleasure in rhythmic forms. † In answering the question, why we need the ‘same’ story over and over again, Miller adds â€Å"The repetition of a rhythmic pattern is intrinsically pleasurable, whatever the pattern is. The repetitions within the pattern are pleasurable themselves. From his claim, I can deduce that repetition is something that readers look for in a story. Come to think of it, it might be one of the driving forces that allow the reader to take interest. It is one primary consideration that writers need to take in making a story.In the fiction story, Father and I, by Par Lagerkvist, I find that the author not only uses repet ition not only for enjoyment but also for the development of the story. Repetition is found in the rhetorical devices that he uses to develop his sentences. For one, he utilizes parallelism in his statements. There was noise and movement everywhere; bumblebees came out of their holes, midges swarmed wherever it was marshy, and birds darted out of the bushes to catch them and back again as quickly. † Another, he uses repetitive words in order to gain more impact in a sentence. â€Å"Nothing was right, nothing was real; it was all so weird. † The genius of Lagerkvist comes out in the repetition of events and elements in the plot and making them contradictory. The story repeats events and elements and creates a contrast of imagery depending on the time.The summary of events follow: the father and child go out, enter the woods, see animals and telegraph poles, encounter a train, and arrive at their destination. At day time, the woods are full of life and movement. Animals a nd telegraph poles sing. The train is a friendly passerby that greets the father and child. Their destination brings remembrance of the childhood of the father. But at night time, the woods change. Animals stare. Poles rumble like talking deep down from the earth. A train passes unexpectedly. They proceed to their destination with the child traumatized by the experience.In doing this, the author accomplishes his goal of creating crisis in the main character (child), bringing him from a situation of certainty and control to a situation of anguish and vulnerability. The skilful repetition of events allows me to read the story and follow the movement easily. The contradiction in the presentation of the events gives a two-sides-of-a-coin effect on the symbols employed by the story. The train, for example, isn’t just a symbol of the father’s ability to control but it also a symbol of his inability to foresee future danger. Performative Function Miller extensively discusses the functions of fiction in his essay.One of these functions that he writes about is the function that speech-act theorists call ‘performative function’. He writes, â€Å"A story has a way of doing things with words. It makes something happen in the real world: for example, it can propose modes of selfhood or ways of behaving that are then imitated in the real world. † Taking his statement and applying it to the story, I sense that Father and I proposes to the real world a stage of common experience and defines this experience. It pays close attention to the coming of age of a child; when the child grows from childhood to adulthood.This story describes how this coming-of-age can be like. The child begins to realize that he feels differently from his father. â€Å"It was so strange that only I was afraid, not Father, that we didn’t think the same. † The divide develops further when the child sees that the father (a railroad worker) didn’t reco gnize the train driver, â€Å"Father didn’t recognize him, didn’t know who he was. † He realizes that his father was powerless. â€Å"†¦The unknown, all that Father knew nothing about, that he wouldn’t be able to protect me against. † The story ‘performs’ by describing the processes that the child underwent.It defines how the child underwent the process of individuation. The child realizes that he is different from his father; his father no longer understands what he is going through. The child now is on his own; he begins understands what it is to be an individual. Further, the child becomes aware that there are things his father could not protect him from. He has to proceed on his own. He has to stand face the world that has its own darkness. In a rather stark manner, the author allows us to gain insight into the coming-of-age. This experience is an experience of cutting-off; this can be rather painful and lonely.He shows that t his is an experience of independence; it will be a life for the person and not for anyone else. It is an experience of uncertainty; not everything will be in control. The world no longer revolves for the convenience of the person. â€Å"It just hurtled, blazing, into the darkness that had no end. † Culture Builders Greenblatt and Miller agree that stories are reflectors and builders of culture. Miller writes â€Å"Fiction [†¦] accurate reflectors of a culture and [†¦] are the makers of that culture and as the unostentatious, but therefore all the more effective policemen of that culture. Greenblatt adds to this by looking at culture as a movement of constraint and mobility. It has the movement of constraint: has a set of limits within which individuals must be contained. It has the movement of mobility: the regulator and guarantor of movement. We find these dynamics in the story as well. We can that the story reflects (moves as constraint) the culture of that time. We need to contextualize this first by looking at the background of the author. Par Lagerkvist lived from 1891 to 1974. He is a son of station master Anders Johan Lagerkvist and Johanna Blad, was born in the south of Sweden.Seeing this, I surmise that the story might come from a personal experience and reflects the culture of his time. In the story, we sense the qualities expected of the males in their culture. They were â€Å"sound and sensible people†. They â€Å"didn’t make much fuss about things. † They stay calm and not think of anything even in difficult situations. The story reflects the image of males as composed; even stoic and unfeeling. The story not only reflects these qualities but also challenges them. It tries to build culture brings about the movement of mobility.The child asks if the Father really does not feel fear. â€Å"I couldn’t understand how he could be so calm when it was so murky†. The story questions this breezy calm and asks for greater transparency. The story also brings to attention how the father is unconnected to feeling and how he could no longer relate to the experience of the child. The story questions that sense of security and certainty that are expected or found of in men of their culture. It challenges this culture to face the world even with one’s insecurity and vulnerability.

New York, Los Angeles And Chicago - 3008 Words

Name: Course: Date: My Home Town Although USA has many different cities, in this discussion, we will be limited to three Cities i.e. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. In the 3 cities we shall broadly discuss the growing up experience in each of the 3 states, strategic features and their staple foods. Finally, the New South Wales in Australia and London in UK would also be looked at. Lenape, an Algonquin who were hunters, fishers and farmers were the first natives of New York. As a result when you meet people from New York interrogate them immediately on where exact they lived on to see if they really mean it (Siegal, Allan and William 98). Childhood in New York city was characterized by: First, going to school that actually had racial diversity, learning how to ride the subways and catch up public buses at a very tender age, having friends from all socioeconomic backgrounds, when you watched movies filmed in New York, you could almost always recognize where they are so easily, begging your pare nts to let you take gymnastics and ice skating lessons at Chelsea Piers, tasting every kind of cuisine out there ( from Ethiopian to Greek-Japanese-Spanish fusion), Facebook albums from high school which often featured the backdrop of the Union Square, high schools full of metal detectors and many security guards, knowing the Grand Prospect Hall , and knowing what the owners look like, knowing who Doctor Zizmor is and that it’s worth your time to queue at Gray’s Papaya andShow MoreRelatedRelationship Between White And White Populations1263 Words   |  6 PagesAs the three largest cities in the United States, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are also epicenters of precipitous segregation. 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