Analysis of Oedipus Rex

Oedipus Rex: The Tyrant is the Child of Pride

            Oedipus Rex, a play by Sophocles, is an excellent example of how too much of a good thing can be bad. Oedipus has an exuberant amount of pride, and he has reason to be prideful. However, he has so much that it ends up being the major flaw that ultimately resulted in his demise.  As the play progresses the audience gets to see just how dangerous too much pride can be.

            In the beginning of the play, Oedipus was the ideal leader. He had strong leadership skills, a passion for justice, was honest with his people, and was interested in doing whatever he could to make Thebes a better place. This is where I first noticed his dangerous pride surfacing. Early in the play the Chorus called upon the gods to descend unto earth and end the plague that has ravaged Thebes. Oedipus is not a god, but, as a leader he saw it as his duty to answer the Chorus’ prayers. He stated “Is this your prayer? It may be answered. Come,/ Listen to me, act as the crisis demands,/ And you shall have relief from all these evils” (200). At first, this seems like Oedipus is doing his duty as king, taking it upon himself to end the plague. But, the chorus had asked the gods to end the plague, not Oedipus. So, by taking it upon himself he is taking on the role of a god, something that the people of Thebes do not approve of. The chorus supported this disapproval when they stated

The tyrant is a child of pride…any mortal who dares hold/ No immortal power in awe/ will be caught up in a net of pain:/  The price for which his levity is sold. Let each man take due earnings, then,/ And keep his hands from holy things (218).

This is the first dangerous step Oedipus takes. It here that he began to let his pride take over, and blind him from the answers he was seeking.

            When Oedipus set out to find Laios’ murderer his pride prevented him from seeing the truth. We can see this when he questioned Teiresias and later when he questioned Creon. As he was questioning Teiresias he got all of the answers he was looking for.  Teiresias told him

The man you have been looking for all this time, / The damned man, the murderer of Laios, That man is in Thebes. /To your mind he is foreignborn, /but it will soon be shown that he is a Theban,/ A revelation that will fail to please (206).

His pride would not allow him to see the truth, and listen to Teiresias. Instead he thought that Teiresias and Creon were conspiring against him. When he questioned Creon his pride began to show its ugly side. His questions seemed rhetorical and he asked them in a way that made me believe he had already made up his mind and was so prideful in his judgment that his opinion would not be changed. Oedipus asked probing, accusing questions like:

You advised me to send for that wizard, did you not?... Why did the prophet not speak against me then?... If he were not involved with you, he could not say that it was I who murdered Laios (209).

By asking these loaded questions shows that Oedipus’ pride that is preventing him from seeing the truth is turning him into a tyrant, making up his mind on little or no evidence and making harsh accusations.

            Although Oedipus may have been getting tyrannical, in the end we learn that he still wishes to be a good leader. When he finds out, without a doubt, that he really did murder Laios he stays true to his word, and is exiled. His personal pride, which is his will to serve his people, is the reason he guarantees the punishment remains for the murderer of Laios. When Oedipus learns that his pride is what was making him blind, he breaks down. I believe gouging out his eyes was his way of taking away some of his dangerous pride. By being physically blind he would not be so sure of the world around him, and maybe he would not be so quick to jump to conclusions as he had in the past.

            It was pride that caused Oedipus to be metaphorically blind. It was his refusal to believe that he had betrayed his people before he had become their respected and adored leader. As the play progressed the audience noticed how Oedipus was getting continually more arrogant, and despite having all of the evidence before him his pride still sheltered him from the truth. When Oedipus had no doubt that he had indeed murdered his father he broke down because he realized the real horror of his deeds and that his pride is what had caused him all of the trouble. Indeed, too much of a good thing is never really good.

Themes of Innocence and Experience in "Kite Runner"

Innocence and Experience: Kite Runner

            The novel Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a powerful story about a childhood friendship between two boys, Amir and Hassan. Hassan is unbelievably loyal to Amir, and is treated as one of the family by Amir’s father, even though he is a servant. The theme that I found to be the foundation of the novel is innocence and experience. We see this theme echo throughout the text, and significantly alter the lives of all the characters in the story, particularly Amir. This story reflects on innocence and experience across the spectrum- from sacrifice, to blindness, to love, to an environment shattered by warfare.

            The lamb is a powerful classic example of innocence. This story has a metaphorical lamb, Hassan. He was sacrificed so Amir could show his prized kite, the last one to fall during a kite fighting tournament, to his father. As Amir watched in terror just before Hassan was raped he stated “…I caught a glimpse of his face. Saw the resignation in it. It was a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb” (66). It was the look of innocence that haunted Amir, ever since he witnessed a lamb sacrificed during the Eid-e-Qorban ritual for the prophet Ibrahim. Shortly after he decided he would not stand up for Hassan he thought to himself “…Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (68). Because of his loyalty, Hassan’s innocence was sacrificed so Amir could prove his value to Baba. This decision to sacrifice Hassan’s innocence would haunt Amir for the rest of his story.

            Amir was also innocent because he was oblivious. He was oblivious in the sense that he did not know that Hassan was also his half brother. Baba had told Amir that the only sin was to steal, and all other sins were a variation of that. Lying was one of these sins. Lying stole a man’s right to the truth. It was much to Amir’s surprise when he learned that his father, Baba, had lied to him his entire life. But, like Oedipus, Amir was metaphorically blind. Like Oedipus, all of the clues were in plain sight, but he failed to interpret them correctly. Oedipus had been told the truth but refused to believe it; Amir had been shown the truth but failed to understand it. Throughout his childhood Baba had treated Amir and Hassan equally. He took them places, bought them things, and showed affection for both of them. Hassan was Baba’s dark secret. Hassan had to be kept secret because Baba, had him with a female servant who was of the Hazara ethnicity. He was Baba’s illegitimate son, which was not socially acceptable. This shows us that Baba is not so different than the husband in the play “A Dolls House,” who feared his wife leaving him, not because the relationship was over, but because he was afraid of what his peers would think. Had Amir known that Hassan was his half brother he may have defended him more and he may have been more loyal to him. Unfortunately, the information came too late for him and he had to live with regret for his cowardly act of abandoning Hassan that day that Assef raped him.

            Amir was not only oblivious to Hassan being his half brother; he was also oblivious to what life in Afghanistan was actually like. All his time living in Afghanistan he had not seen or known how much poverty was in his country. Baba was a powerful, wealthy man, who helped the poor every chance he had. Because of seeing Baba help the poor by building an orphanage and giving beggars’ money, Amir had a false sense that poverty levels were relatively low. He was awaken from this false, sheltered view of Afghan life when he returned twenty years later. As he was riding to Kabul with Farid he stated “I feel like a tourist in my own country” (203). Farid then pointed to “an old man dressed in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap pack filled with scrub grass tied to his back” (204). While this was an unfamiliar sight to Amir, Farid stated “That’s the real Afghanistan… That’s the Afghanistan I know. You? You’ve always been a tourist here, you just didn’t know it” (204). It wasn’t until twenty years later that Amir learned what life was really like for most of Afghanistan. What he was seeing now was the Afghanistan Farid had known all his life. The poverty was all around him, he just failed to see it.

            However, not all of Amir’s experiences took place in Afghanistan. After he had moved to the United States, he and Baba frequented a bazaar. It was there that Amir experienced his first notable crush, Soraya. Like “Araby,” and “On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning,” Amir was afraid to speak to her at first. Like the narrator in “100% Perfect” Amir knew that she was perfect for him. It was love at first sight. The big difference was, like the narrator in “Araby,” he did eventually talk to her, and was able to watch her on multiple occasions. He found ways to get away from his father’s table go past hers, until one day he suddenly found himself “standing at the edge of [Soraya’s] white tablecloth, staring at [her]…” (127). He tried to impress her as the narrator in Araby had, except he did not have to bring her something back from the bazaar since they were already there. Instead, he noticed that she was reading a book; he tried to impress her by offering to bring in one of his stories. Amir had experienced, and gotten the attention of his first crush.

            When Amir went back to Afghanistan he experienced the horrors of a war-torn environment opposed to the safety of his California residence. This is like Hyder from the audio recording “This American Life.” Both men were unaware of the horrors in Afghanistan. Amir was a refugee, and Hyder was the son of a former refugee. While Amir had been in Afghanistan when the Taliban were still in power he witnessed a very different type of violence. He witnessed a reign of terror, and oppression, that appeared to be chaos. Hyder witnessed post-Taliban Afghanistan. He witnessed an Afghanistan terrorized by the rebellion of Taliban. Many of the buildings were still in ruin, and gunfire was still a common sight. For both of them, it was their first time in an actual war-zone. Amir had escaped when he was younger before most of the fighting broke out with the soviets, and returned under an oppressive rule. For Hyder, he was experiencing a completely new environment that he had only read about and seen pictures of. Both of them experienced culture shock with the violence while the locals went on with everyday life as if nothing happened. The violence was a drastic change for both of them, who were used to the cozy lives they had in California.

            The novel Kite Runner was a fascinating tale about innocence and experience across the board, from sacrifice, to blindness, to love, to an environment shattered by warfare. Even though it is a story about a friendship between two boys growing up in Afghanistan, Amir is the focal point. He sacrificed his best friend, and as he later learned, his half brother, like a lamb, so he could impress his father with his trophy from the kite fighting competition. He learned that he had been blind all his life, too blind to see all of the warning signs indicating that Hassan was his half brother even though it was never spoken until after his fathers’ death. He was too blind to see what life was really like for a majority of Afghans outside of the upper-class realm he grew up in. He also experienced his first notable crush, with the love at first sight phenomenon, she proved to be the one that he would later marry. Amir also experienced the horrors of war, and its affect on his homeland, and former peers. Innocence and experience is the foundation for Kite Runner.

 

Six Graphic Variables

In cartography there are six graphic variables that make for a good map. I have assembled these in a poster format to make them easier to understand, and visually compare the differences among them.

Geographical Crime Displacement Chicago's South Side

This is my second and most recent poster presented at the Race Ethnicity and Place Conference in Binghamton, New York in October of 2010, as well as at the Association of American Geographers Regional Conference at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. It is a beautiful poster illustrating crime trends throughout the demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes. My argument is: while one goal of public housing transformation was for the purpose of Situational Crime Prevention, where local governing agencies attempt to eliminate crime by changing the situation in which it occurs. In this case they demolished severely distressed high-rise public housing projects. However as my research suggests, crime was not actually eliminated and rather it moved to neighboring police districts with the housing developments former tenants. Stay tuned for my earlier poster presented at the University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire Student Research Day, which won a fourth place award. Also, stay tuned for my future developments of this project. I am currently working on getting the crime data maps into a much more concise, understandable format. Right now, they are too much of a data overload.

What is Color?

Color is the most important graphic variable used by cartographers. This illustration describes both CMYK color and RGB color as well as other color variables.