Oedipus Lyric Essay

 

Have you ever wondered why your English teachers are so obsessed with a two thousand year old story? The answer lies with the constants of the human experience. We, as people, are enthralled by these stories because although times have changed, humans have not. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles may seem like a pointless old-timey read, but in understanding it, doorways to understanding literature, and more importantly, ourselves, are opened. Intertextuality plays a big role in its importance because consciously or unconsciously, the influence and themes of Oedipus have made their way into all forms of literature and art since its conception. Oedipus explores how one’s virtues may lead to ruin. This concept still enthralls us to this day because we have experienced it firsthand, and by the same means, it’s found itself in literature and art ever since.

In analyzing Oedipus’s character, we find his virtues. He is brave, deeply loyal, and has a strong sense of justice which he relentlessly pursues. These are all established early on in his story, and his people love him for it. Those same virtues, however, lead to his downfall. His bravery and justice cause him to kill Laius, his father, in what seems to him as just self-defence. As plagues descend upon Thebes, it is his justice that causes him to pursue Laius’s killer which, unknown to him, is himself. Even when faced with external pressure from those around him to stop chasing the truth, he continues for the sake of his people and his city. When he does reach the truth, he takes responsibility. His justice compels him to bring down punishment upon himself, and he does so by gouging his eyes out and leaving the city. Oedipus is by no means a perfect hero. In fact, he treads the equilibrium of holy and damned throughout the course of the story. As referenced by Aristotle in his work "On Tragic Character", Oedipus is placed in the middle of the extremes of what we consider “good” and “evil”. This makes his tragedy all the more impactful on the audience. His downfall comes from the mistakes borne from his virtues, and we as readers can find meaning in his suffering because we all, in some form or another, have had our virtues, or what we deemed as good deeds, breed outcomes we would never had liked to face.

The phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” sums up this aspect of the human experience. Much of what we do in our lives comes from good intentions, at least from our perspectives. Beyond Oedipus, this idea is far-reaching and is seen in a myriad of media. This can be seen in the works of everyone’s high school English nightmare, William Shakespeare. Specifically, one of his most famous plays, Romeo and Juliet, portrays this folly brilliantly. Both Romeo and Juliet are tragic figures. Love is one of the most powerful and prolific human emotions, and it can cause us to do the unthinkable. For us, love is one of the highest virtues, and for good reason. However in the case of both Romeo and Juliet, it became their undoing. Their flame of love burned so powerfully it defied the rigid social rules of their people. That same flame consumed them when Romeo came upon Juliet’s “dead” body and took his own life. Juliet followed suit after waking up and finding Romeo lifeless next to her. This tragedy parallels the idea of virtue leading to despair that Oedipus brought forth.

    

Video games are no exception to intertextuality from Oedipus either. A popular role-playing game, Persona 5 the Royal, has one of the most well-done tragic characters in modern media. Takuto Maruki, a young psychologist, was a deeply caring and compassionate person. He came to Shujin Academy, the school the protagonist of the game attended, after students there endured abuse from an ex-teacher. He provided counseling in their time of turmoil and helped them move past their pain. He himself endured major loss in his past. His past girlfriend who he was planning to marry was faced with a life-altering tragedy when she experienced a violent robbery. It left her a shell of a person, and Maruki did not want that kind of pain to be inflicted upon anyone else, hence his career path. This all changed when events of the story gave him the power to alter the cognition of the populace. With his new god-like powers, he made everyone live their ideal lives, free from pain. Their deepest dreams became reality under his control, however this inherently robbed them of their free-will and being. By removing their pain, he removed a piece of them that had molded them into the people they became. They had forgotten their pain, and in turn, had forgotten who they were. This false happiness that plagued the world is akin to tyranny of the vilest sort, and the protagonist of the game was able to break free from his false reality and eventually, free everyone from Maruki’s chains. Maruki was the purest and most well-meaning character of the story, however those same qualities were what imposed absolute control over the people of the world. In the end, he atoned for his actions and began a new life, not unlike Oedipus. Although the means differed, Maruki’s downfall can be traced back to the influence of the tragedy in Oedipus.

On the subject of world domination, we come to animated TV shows. The Legend of Korra, the sequel to the beloved Avatar the Last Airbender, had a strong political focus. A prominent character of the story was Suyin Beifong, the leader of a prosperous city named Zaofu. Her city was a beacon of peace and advancement in the Earth Kingdom (the native region), and it was built upon the foundation Suyin laid as its leader. Her virtues of maternal caring and progressive attitudes were key in building the metropolis. Those same virtues brought devastation to the Earth Kingdom in the fourth season of the show. During the events of season three, the Earth Kingdom’s ruler, the queen, was assassinated and anarchy became the law of the land. The other world leaders urged Suyin to step in and establish order, but she refused because she did not want to be seen as a dictator who took an opportunity for power. Due to this decision, her right hand, Kuvira, took charge behind her back and established a tyrannical dictatorship over the course of three years. Her power was unchecked and as a result, she was able to construct a superweapon, akin to our hydrogen bombs, that she attempted to use to take control of the center of coexistence of the Avatar universe, Republic City. She was ultimately stopped in her conquest, but it was Suyin’s virtues that gave Kuvira the chance to seize power and bring devastation to the Earth Kingdom. The oppression of the Earth Kingdom’s people stemmed from Suyin’s virtues which parallels the oppression of the people of Thebes due to Oedipus’s virtues.

Oedipus Rex has exhibited the phenomenon of staying relevant after two thousand years since its birth into the world. This phenomenon can be traced back to the constants of the human experience. We as readers are enthralled by Oedipus’s tragedy because it is something so very human. His tragedy was a consequence of his virtues, and that causes us to pity him to some degree in the events of the story. Our pity stems from our own lives. It’s often neither our ill intentions nor our vices that lead to tragedy in our own lives, it’s our virtues that become our greatest undoing. This has been a constant for humanity throughout the centuries as the influence of Oedipus can be seen in a myriad of works, from Shakespeare to animated TV shows. Thus, Oedipus has a staying power that few pieces of literature exhibit. This is telltale proof that despite the fact that we as humans like to think we’ve progressed unimaginably since Sophocles’s time, our emotions, behaviors, and experiences have remained unchanged.