Was Oedipus a Hero - Essay Example

? 25 September Was Oedipus a hero? In this paper I will argue that Oedipus is a hero, and he keeps proving this again and again right from the very beginning of the play till its end. In the history, humans have conventionally associated special skills with heroes. A hero is somebody who would jump into a crowd of bullies to save the life of a girl. A hero would shoot all rascals and yet would survive with a hundred bullets in his stomach. This tells that a hero has traditionally been perceived as a physically strong person, but physical strength is much smaller a virtue than emotional strength. A true hero is characterized by his emotional strength. Analysis of Oedipus suggests that Oedipus was a true as well as tragic hero. Human experience tells that a responsible king strives hard for the peace of the nation. In the start of the play, Oedipus takes all measures in the capacity of the King of Thebes to protect his people from the plague that has caught them. He not only provides everything that his people need, but also makes sure that they stay in good health. Therefore he sends Creon to the house of Apollo to seek the oracle’s advice. This is expected of a responsible king. Then to find Laius’s murderer, Oedipus seeks advice from the Chorus and hence approaches Teiresias for help. The fact that Oedipus consults the Chorus regarding the way he should proceed with the investigation speaks of the value he gives to his people and immense confidence that he places in them. People feel honored when they have been consulted by the ruler before he makes important decisions. Human experience tells that subordinates’ morale is vital to the success of any system, be that as small as an organizational setup or as large as a country. Oedipus cares a lot for his people, and involves them in the decision making. By doing this, he provides another proof of being a people’s property. Oedipus is bold and is ready to accept any kind of challenge for the well-being and betterment of his people. That is why he continues to explore the secret of Laius’s murderer after he has been warned by Teiresias that he would not be happy to learn the truth. He does not care for his personal peace of mind. He would go to any length to provide his people with a safe environment to live in. His efforts to search for the cure of plague, his involvement of the public in decision making and his dare to know the truth despite having been warned make Oedipus a hero. Oedipus has no other way but to suspect that there has been a deal between Teirasias and Creon. He fully believes that Creon is the traitor and yet he lets go of him when his wife and the Chorus plead him to be open-minded. Such generosity and forgiveness can be expected of nobody else but a hero. This potentially means that Oedipus forgives a person that insults him overtly in front of the whole public and for something, that Oedipus has not even done. Oedipus was in power. He could have got Creon as well as Teirasias killed for their act. Even a king who has actually done all the crimes Teirasias accused Oedipus of would not spare Teirasias and Creon for bringing this secret in the public eye, but Oedipus was kind enough to let go of them when he was actually innocent! Oedipus also knows what forgiving Creon means. Creon says to the Chorus, “I would have you know that this request of yours really requests my death or banishment…Well, let go him then – if I must die ten times for it…” (Sophocles and Grene, line 669). There is little wonder he does so because heroes do that! Oedipus has sufficient evidence to believe what Teirasias said. He had killed a stranger at a place where three roads met. He could tell that Jocasta was talking about the very stranger as she mentioned some identity marks for Laius. He also knows that his ankles are pierced. All of these together with an oracle’s prediction that Oedipus would kill his own father and marry his own mother before he left his hometown provide Oedipus with sufficient evidence to quit any further investigations. But if he quits, he compromises upon his values and can not justify his retreat to his own conscience. Before, he approved of Jocasta’s and the Chorus’s request to let go of Creon because it was for the sake of Creon’s life. This time, he listens neither to Jocasta nor to the Chorus when they forbid Oedipus to explore further details because they suspect that Oedipus may find himself the murderer if he carries on with his investigation. Oedipus carries on his search because, this time it’s his own life that is at stake, not Creon’s or somebody else’s, and Oedipus can sacrifice his life to get his people rid of the plague. Oedipus continued exploring the truth even after Jocasta kept providing him with reasons not to believe the oracle time and again. First, Jocasta says that Laius was killed by five robbers. Then she says that the messenger from Corinth gave the obituary of Oedipus’s father, but nothing can satisfy Oedipus’s conscience until he has objective reasons to believe the news. This confirms that Oedipus is a hero. “…with those you love best you live in foulest shame unconsciously…” (Sophocles and Grene, line 366). Despite Teirasias’s confession that Oedipus killed his father and slept with his mother unconsciously, Oedipus can not forgive himself. He could have banished the land if he so wanted to provide his people with relief from plague, but he thought the better of it. Oedipus is by no means obliged to bear any kind of punishment since whatever he did was done in complete ignorance and lack of knowledge. Oedipus does not know that he had been sent away by his parents after he was born. He is not aware of the fact that Polybus, that he has been considering his father all his life was not actually his father. Oedipus does not know that the person he is killing in the accident is his real father. Marrying Jocasta was nothing but an accident. He would never have married Jocasta had he had the slightest clue about her as his mother. Oedipus is not the kind of person that would go against the social and religious norms for the satisfaction of his lustful desires. Oedipus married Jocasta just as any gentleman would marry a girl that is not his sister, mother, daughter, niece or aunt. Despite being aware of the fact that he had no knowledge of his father and his mother, Oedipus punishes himself the way he would like to punish a person who knowingly committed all these crimes. This essentially speaks of the fact that Oedipus is a man of great moral character, courage, bravery and that his conscious is alive. When humans commit crimes, they either seek forgiveness or are punished. Human experience tells that most of the people go with the first option. Oedipus was already forgiven by the Chorus, but little did that matter because he had not forgiven himself! It is human psychology that convinces him to take such bold actions when the conscience is alive. Human beings live with certain values, some of which they value so much that they can sacrifice their life for them even if they are not religiously obliged to. There mere idea of the crimes he had unconsciously committed made Oedipus so overwhelmed and emotionally unbalanced, that he could not even think whether he was at fault or not. Analysis of all these points suggests that Oedipus is a hero in some ways, and a tragic hero in some other ways. Human experience tells that not many people can dare to challenge fate and dodge the prophecies, but Oedipus does it again and again, first by leaving Corinth and then, by carrying out the investigation. Oedipus is a responsible king, a man with alive conscience, a leader who sacrifices his love as well as his life for the well-being of his subordinates, a ruler who would fulfill his promise even if that costs his life, and a man of exemplary courage and bravery. All of these traits make Oedipus a hero. What makes him a tragic hero is the fact that fate did not favor him despite his noble intentions. Because of the fact that Oedipus incurs himself loss after struggling for the benefit of people, the play leaves the audience with a heavy heart as it ends. The audience overlook the grave sins Oedipus had committed in his ignorance and mourn his fate because they sympathize with him. The tragedy in which he is caught and the way he reacts to it makes Oedipus a tragic hero. Failure for him was inevitable, yet his courage to face the consequences makes Oedipus a hero. So far, Oedipus’s numerous behavioral traits have been analyzed to emphasize upon the fact that he is a hero, both tragic and true. There is a lot about Oedipus that otherwise makes him a hero even if he is analyzed from the matter-of-fact point of view instead of a behavioral point of view. In conventional practice, the hero pattern proposed by Lord Raglan is frequently employed when an individual’s character is supposed to be analyzed to consider him as a hero or otherwise. Oedipus has got all to be considered as eligible to be called as a hero as per the pattern of a hero suggested by Lord Raglan. First of all, being the son of the King of Thebes makes Oedipus a hero. Oedipus is a special person for an oracle approaches his parents to tell that he would kill his father. This specialty is an indication of his heroism. Human experience suggests that when a child is abandoned this way, he is adopted by a childless middle class family who can afford to raise at least one child, but Oedipus’s heroism lands him into the laps of the King and the Queen of Corinth. Human experience also suggests that a vast majority of adopted children are told that their biological parents had died in an accident or are not with them for any reason, but Oedipus’s parents never let him know that. They grow him up like they would their own son. Thus, the hero maintains kinship with the King and Queen of Corinth, if not of Thebes. The fact that the audience is not told anything about the childhood of Oedipus also makes him conform to the standards of a hero as suggested by Lord Raglan. Another fact that Oedipus ended up becoming the King of Thebes from where he was once exiled as a child is consistent with yet another standard of Lord Raglan’s pattern of hero. Oedipus was meant to be a king in all circumstances. Had he not been abandoned by his biological parents, he would have been the King of Thebes. Had he not left Corinth to escape the verdict of the oracle, he would have been the King of Corinth. His destiny leads him to what he was born for. He is a hero, born to rule! Heroes are traditionally characterized by their physical strength. Human experience tells that exceptional physical skills have been considered as a fundamental virtue of such heroes as Hercules and Tarzon. The same physical strength is emphasized upon in the play when Oedipus is shown winning over the giant and the dragon. The fact that he kills the King of Thebes also refers towards his exceptional abilities. Although Oedipus does attain his status of a ruler anyway, yet his fortune follows him until he gets exiled from Thebes once again, this time for a different reason. Thus, when analyzed from the matter-of-fact point of view, Oedipus can be thought of as an individual that is born a hero but dies a pariah, though the analysis is incomplete unless his nobility is taken into consideration. The two, when combined assure that Oedipus is a hero! Works Cited: Sophocles, and Grene, David. Oedipus the King. USA: The University of Chicago, 2010. Print. Read More