Character and Temperament in Homer's Odyssey and Sophocles' Oedipus the King - Essay Example

Character and Temperament in Homer’s Odyssey and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King Odysseus and Oedipus are both leaders of great kingdoms, but they have trudged on different paths, with Odysseus reaching redemption through returning to his homeland and reclaiming his throne and wife, while Oedipus meets a tragic destiny because of fate and hubris. Despite these differences in the protagonists’ endings, these characters have similarities in their characters and temperaments. This essay aims to compare and contrast these two leaders in terms of their individual sense of commitment, responsibility, and pride, as well as their temperaments and relationship with their gods. Odysseus and Oedipus have perseverance, a strong sense of accountability, and pride that fires up their temperament; Odysseus, however, is a master of deceit and lies and submits fully to the gods, while Oedipus unwittingly defies the gods through his actions. Odysseus and Oedipus portray perseverance in their different missions in life. Odysseus depicts perseverance in his attitudes and actions during his many challenges in life. Bernhard Frank, English professor at Buffalo State University, explores the importance of Book 5 in introducing the hardships that Odysseus undergoes to return to his kingdom and family. He believes that Book 5 shows the “realistic” setting of Ithaca, a precursor to the subsequent “fantastic voyage” to the underworld (179). The voyage represents the moral development of Odysseus as he goes through unimaginable lengths to reclaim what is his. Furthermore, Odysseus inspires his people to remain patient and audacious after passing dangers in Skylla and Charybdis. He tells them: Dear friends, surely we are not unlearned in evils. This is no greater evil now than it was when the Cyclops had us cooped in his hollow cave by force and violence, but even there, by my courage and counsel and my intelligence, we escaped away. I think that all this will be remembered someday too. Then do as I say, let us all be won over.”’ (Homer 12.208-213). Odysseus reminds them of their triumphs, which will serve as their food of courage. He even mentions Cyclops, whom they have escaped through cunning and valor. He stresses that history will not forget their adventures, and it is important to win their struggles one at a time. As a leader, Odysseus urges his people to go beyond their limitations and attain vast opportunities because of perseverance. Like Odysseus, Oedipus has a persevering character, who wants to know the truth. He expresses his intense desire to know who killed Laius so that he can remove the curse on his kingdom: And on the murderer this curse I lay (On him and all the partners in his guilt):-- Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness! And for myself, if with my privity He gain admittance to my hearth, I pray The curse I laid on others fall on me. See that ye give effect to all my hest, For my sake and the god's and for our land, A desert blasted by the wrath of heaven. (Sophocles 244-253). He curses the killer who has brought disaster on his people. He even curses himself if the murder enters his kingdom without being punished. Such is his determination that Oedipus sacrifices his life to avenge his people. Odysseus and Oedipus exhibit strong desire to achieve their goals in life, without thinking of the challenges in their midst. Aside from perseverance, Odysseus and Oedipus have a strong sense of responsibility. Odysseus feels responsible for the welfare of his people. He protects his crew from the Sirens, when he instructs them to put wax in their ears. He does not want them to lose themselves to the Sirens. Moreover, Odysseus saves them from the Lotus Eaters. Mark Kremer, assistant professor of Political Science at Kennesaw State University, describes the tyranny that the Lotus Eaters and the Cyclops represent, which is despotism. He asserts that the “Lotus Eaters are an image of pleasure and of pacifism” (104). They have the strength of a dead spirit, an oxymoron. To eat the lotus is to lose everything, including the sense of responsibility and reason (Kremer 104). Odysseus saves his people from a worthless existence of nothingness: “The men who eat the lotus plant forget their home and their duties to it, and live in the ever-vanishing present without an awareness of past and future” and “They want to live with and be like the Lotus Eaters, which is to say that they want to be free from the attachments and duties that defined them as husbands, fathers, and friends. Their self-satisfaction destroys their capacity for love, esteem, and even self-awareness” (Kremer 104). This incident with the Lotus Eaters demonstrates the importance of social responsibilities to oneself, one’s family and one’s kingdom. Oedipus feels the same accountability for his people’s welfare. University of Otago professors Grant Gillett and Robin Hankey assert that Oedipus wants to do what is right. His “strong sense of right and wrong” is one of his virtues (280). He wants to right the wrong on his people for its sake and for the sake of his kingdom. Leroy Searle, renowned professor of English and Comparative Literature at University of Washington, compares and contrasts Hamlet and Oedipus. He remarks that Oedipus has discovered the “miasma,” or the “pollution” to his kingdom, and this is anything that impedes the investigation regarding the truth (330). The miasma happens when a blood crime is not resolved, and so “purification” or catharsis cannot be attained. Searle clarifies, however, that Oedipus is not the subject of the first curse, where the killer must be shunned and exiled, if people will use “the Freudian device of the unconscious” (Searle 330). Oedipus tells everything he knows and does not hesitate from finding the truth. He is a “cooperative informant,” on other words, which separates him from Teiresias, who knows the truth from the start but hesitates to disclose it (Searle 330). Oedipus and Odysseus believe that they are accountable for their fates and kingdoms. Pride is elemental to these characters too. Odysseus knows his physical abilities and he uses them on his enemies. He is aware of his prowess: I know well how to handle the polished bow, and would be first to strike any man with an arrow aimed at a company of hostile men, even though many companions were standing close beside me, and all shooting with bows at the enemies. (Homer 8.215-217). He knows his physical abilities and how to use them. In addition, he gets truly angry against his enemies. In a fit of pride and wrath, he kills all of Penelope’s suitors and most of the people who are connected to them. He clears every bad seed he sees. Furthermore, because of pride, Odysseus wants recognition for beating Cyclops. Instead of hiding his identity, he reveals to his enemy: Cyclops, if any mortal man ever asks you who it was that inflicted upon your eye this shameful blinding, tell him that you were blinded by Odysseus, sacker of cities. Laertes is his father, and he makes his home on Ithaka. (Homer 9.501-505). He shows hubris by not resisting the urge to brag about his exploits. In addition, at some point in time, Odysseus displays pride against the gods. He wants to defy them: “Come then, goddess, answer me truthfully this: is there some way for me to escape away from deadly Charybdis, but yet fight the other off, when she attacks my companions?” ‘So I spoke, and she, shining among goddesses, answered: “Hardy man, your mind is full forever of fighting and battle work. Will you not give way even to the immortals? She is no mortal thing but a mischief immortal, dangerous, difficult and bloodthirsty, and there is no fighting against her, nor any force of defense. It is best to run away from her.” (Homer 12.112-120) He wants to escape the wrath of the goddess. Odysseus learns later on that it is better to follow the gods than to oppose them. Like Odysseus, Oedipus has a fiery pride. It is his pride that leads him to kill his father. When Laius strikes him, he fights back and kills him. Pride in his self-worth makes him easily angry, a trait he must have gotten from his father. Moreover, Oedipus demonstrates pride against others who seem to be deterring him from learning the truth. Oedipus shows disrespect to an old man who does not want to reveal his prophecy. Oedipus becomes angry because Teiresias is hiding something: Yea, I am wroth, and will not stint my words, But speak my whole mind. Thou methinks thou art he, Who planned the crime, aye, and performed it too, All save the assassination; and if thou Hadst not been blind, I had been sworn to boot That thou alone didst do the bloody deed. (Sophocles 345-350). He wants to badly to know the truth that he resorts to finger-pointing. If Teiresias will not speak what he sees, Oedipus will not be reluctant to be candid with him. He charges the blind man for being the perpetrator of the crimes. Oedipus also dismisses the advice of his wife. Jocasta warns him to let go of the trail to the truth. She fears that something will go wrong. Oedipus remains steadfast in his mission: Let the storm burst, my fixed resolve still holds, To learn my lineage, be it ne'er so low. It may be she with all a woman's pride Thinks scorn of my base parentage. But I Who rank myself as Fortune's favorite child, The giver of good gifts, shall not be shamed. She is my mother and the changing moons My brethren, and with them I wax and wane. Thus sprung why should I fear to trace my birth? Nothing can make me other than I am. (Sophocles 1075-1086). Oedipus thinks that Jocasta is only worried of his heritage, while he thinks that his fortune is good all the time. The dramatic irony is that he has no good fortune at all, as the audience already has an inkling of his impending doom. Furthermore, when Oedipus says that nothing else makes him than his own actions, this is also a verbal and situational irony. He makes words, but not his fate. Only the gods can control his make and fate. Differences arise in ability for deceit. Odysseus is a master of deceit and lies and submits fully to the gods, while Oedipus unwittingly defies the gods through his actions. John B. Vlahos writes about deceit that Odysseus has to use by posing as a beggar. He shows that Penelope recognizes him and sends him hints, so that he and her son will be safe. She requests for the beggar to interpret her dream: But come now, hear this dream of mine, and interpret it for me. Twenty geese I have in the house that come forth from the water and eat wheat, and my heart warms with joy when I watch them. But forth from the mountain there came a great eagle with crooked beak and broke all their necks and killed them; and they lay strewn in a leap in the halls, while he was borne aloft to the bright sky Now for my part I wept and wailed, in a dream though it was, and round me thronged the fair-tressed Achaean women, as I grieved piteously because the eagle had slain my geese. Then back he came and perched upon a projecting roof-beam, and with the voice of a mortal man checked my weeping, and said:'"Be of good cheer, daughter of far-famed Icarius; this is no dream, but a true vision of good which shall verily find fulfillment. The geese are the wooers, and I, that before was the eagle, am now again come back as thy husband, who will let loose a cruel doom upon all the wooers. (Homer 19.535-50). Vlahos argues that Odysseus does not interpret the dream but answers it. From here, he shows his understanding to his wife that he understands her cryptic messages. The goddess Athene mostly helps Odysseus in his deception. Athene deceives people, so that they can help Odysseus. An example is what she did to Nausikaa: [Athene] drifted in like a breath of wind to where the girl slept, and came and stood above her head and spoke a word to her, likening herself to the daughter of Dymas, famed for seafaring, a girl of the same age, in whom her fancy delighted. (Homer 6.20-23). This action is important for the safety of Odysseus. In another instance, she shows herself in different forms: Then Odysseus rose to go to the city. Athene with kind thought for Odysseus drifted a deep mist about him, for fear some one of the great-hearted Phaiakians, meeting him, might speak to him in a sneering way and ask where he came from. But when he was about to enter the lovely city, there the gray-eyed goddess Athene met him, in the likeness of a young girl, a little maid, carrying a pitcher […]. (Homer 7.14-20). Athene seems to be the teacher of deception for Odysseus. She is a fitting model for her favorite, and Odysseus learns that he must follow the gods to have good fortune. These deceptions are critical to getting to Penelope without being killed by her suitors. This paper proceeds to the tragedy of Oedipus. Oedipus does not deserve his fate, despite his anger and pride issues, because he only wants to know the truth. Kurt Fosso, Associate Professor of English at Lewis & Clark College, argues that Oedipus did not murder his father. He states: To presume that Oedipus killed Laius is therefore to encounter an improbable, if not an impossible, sequence of events: in which Oedipus murdered the king, traveled to the Sphinx and thence to a city that not only already knew of the death but had already “neglect[ed]” its investigation. (Fosso 35). Oedipus does not hide from the truth. He seeks it at his own expense because he is a righteous man. Whatever misdeeds he has done, he did not consciously do them. If he had known that Laius is his father, he would have not killed him. If he had known that Jocasta is her mother, he would have not married her. Oedipus is a victim of his fate, where his loss of free will has earned him a lifetime of misery. Odysseus and Oedipus are both passionate and determined leaders. They did not let go of their goals until they have attained them. They achieved their purposes for their kingdoms through their capabilities and the will of the gods. They even have the same fiery dispositions. People who have crosses them have paid in different ways. Oedipus, however, gets the tragic end. He loses everything, but the knowledge of the truth. This knowledge imprisons him with grief and seclusion, even if it does liberate his people. These kings have the characters that truly fit great kings, and for that, their stories continue to have meaning to present leaders of our time, leaders who need models of character, leaders who always put the sake of the public over their own. Works Cited Fosso, Kurt. “Oedipus Crux: Reasonable Doubt in Oedipus the King.” College Literature 39.3 (2012): 26-60. Print. Frank, Bernhard. “Homer's Odyssey.” Explicator 58.4 (2000): 179-180. Print. Gillett, Grant, and Robin Hankey. “Oedipus the King: Temperament, Character, and Virtue.” Philosophy & Literature 29.2 (2005): 269-285. Print. Homer. The Odyssey of Homer. Trans. Richard Lattimore. New York: HarperCollins. Print. Kremer, Mark. “Two Tales of Tyranny: Images of Despotism in the Odyssey.” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 34.2 (2007): 103-107. Print. Searle, Leroy F. “The Conscience of the King: Oedipus, Hamlet, and the Problem of Reading.” Comparative Literature 49.4 (1997): 316-344. Print. Sophocles. Oedipus the King. Trans. Francis Storr. Project Gutenberg.Web. 9 Apr. 2012. Vlahos, John B. “Homer's Odyssey, Books 19 and 23: Early Recognition; A Solution to the Enigmas of Ivory and Horns, and the Test of the Bed.” College Literature 34.2 (2007): 107-131. Read More