Analysis Of The Oedipus Trilogy Essay Research — страница 2

the flexibility to move easily between the three different stories without having to explain each setting in length. Each character in Oedipus? line all seems to have one thing in common, their stubbornness. Creon seems to be a man of distinction and honor in the story. Tiresias, as the seer, symbolizes knowledge and reason. Jocasta acts as the mediator between Oedipus and the rest of the world. The two daughters are quiet and obedient to only their family and to what makes sense. The sons are the symbol of the everlasting conflict in the line of Oedipus. Of course the setting takes a major role in the play. It takes place in ancient Greece, naturally, where tragedies and stories of misfortune are known to happen. And as such there are many symbols used throughout the trilogy.

The chorus is one of the main symbols continually used in the story, singing their strophies and antistrophies. Their importance is to show what the people of the time would feel about what was happening. They are sort of a mild version of critics in the story. Tiresias, the seer, is another great symbol in the story. Though he is blind, he is proved in the story to have seen things more clearly than the stubborn Oedipus would have. The irony of it is that Oedipus himself later became that seer in the story of Colonus, with Antigone as his own hand-girl. The plays of Oedipus also use a great range of picturesque speech to make a point. We see it in the very first lines of Oedipus the king when Oedipus asks his beloved people, ?what is the meaning of this thronging round my feet-

this holding out of olive branches wreathed in woe?? (Roche 23). By this sentence Sophocles is showing that his people are crying at his feet for an answer to their sickness. Little did Oedipus know that he had his own much larger problem on his hands. The plays of Oedipus have long been some of the most enlightening and teaching of stories. This story sparked the study of much psychological debate and theories pertaining to the love of ones mother and ones own sanity. It was used in Ancient Greece to tell of the twisted ways that Fate worked and how you can do something you may not want to out of pure ignorance. This story is a truly remarkable one for those who would read it for pleasure, and yet it is a plague of its own for many a student. And it is still used today so that

we may study how an ancient culture thought. Much of Greco-Roman myths are centered on the subject of Fate. Homers epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey are two such examples. We can see that their societies were greatly concerned with Fate, as much of their writing reflects that. Every society has its own needs and concerns, and literature is always the best way to reflect them. 345