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24.12.2020 at 00:00
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Arts/Entertainment
The ancient Greek literature and the medieval English literature have much in common in spite of the obvious dissimilarities caused by time differences. Both Oedipus Rex and Hamlet are the tragic works. The heroes must confront hard challenges. Oedipus faces three the most difficult ones. The first one is becoming the king of Thebes. The following two come after many years of being a king. He must deal with the pestilence and find a murder solution. In addition to that, Sophocles depicts the problems of regicide, which is an unintended parenticide, marriage with Oedipusâ own mother, and responsibility for the people he governed. Hamlet is the most difficult for the interpretation of all of Shakespeareâs tragedies because of the extreme complexity of its intention. No other piece of the world literature has caused such a large number of conflicting explanations. Hamlet challenges many of todayâs conventional thoughts and beliefs, particularly about vengeance and deceit, and the consequences of doing wrong. One of the morals of the play Hamlet is to forgive and forget rather than to plot revenge. The hardest challenges of the hero are revenge, deception, and madness. The author appeals to the importance of the consequences. Oedipus and Hamlet, the representatives of the royal families, have common purposes and both reach the tragic end; however, the circumstances and the way they choose differ.
Oedipus is the hero of the tragedy who is not a toy in the hands of the evil fate, but the person that does everything to confront it, the man who courageously takes the blows of fate, determines to discover the truth, and is not afraid of it. In his initial speech, he asks why the suppliants are at his door and shows his sympathy. The reader sees that this man has a heart. Later, the Oedipusâ character reveals in his relationships with the other people. Oedipus applies to Teresias, the blind seer, with an urgent request for assistance in tracing the offender: âWe are in your handsâ (Sophocles). Even though Teresias has no direct answer, in his words, the reader can see vague, but ominous hints. His visionary laments are in words: âHow terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the man thatâs wise!â (Sophocles). Oedipus, as a hot-tempered man, becomes so furious that blames Teresias with cruel accusation. Oedipus is surprised by how shamelessly the seer started up and threatens him. However, the prophet is strong in his righteousness. Oedipus sees in the Teresiasâ statements the manipulation of Creon. The king is suspicious and impatient. The dialogue of Oedipus and Creon is a sample of Sophoclesâ drama skills. Oedipus accuses Creon in collusion with Teresias in order to blame him as a killer of the king Laius. Creon holds with dignity a conversation with Oedipus who, after a little shade of suspicions, expresses an immediate terrible accusation. âTo throw away an honest friend is, as it were, to throw your life away, which a man loves the bestâ (Sophocles) â these words are the Creonâs argument to Oedipus, who wants not just banish, but kill him. This shows the radicalism and partly crudity of the kingâs decisions. The interaction between Oedipus and Jocasta leads to the revelation of the new feature of heroâs character. This begins after the wife attempts to calm her husband. She tells him how false predictions can be. She retells him how the priests had predicted that their own son will kill Laius, her first husband. Therefore, on the third day of the babyâs birth, Lai threw it to the inaccessible rock. He did not die from his sonâs hand as it was predicted, but from the unknown robbers at the intersection of the roads. However, this reassuring strengthens Oedipusâ suspicions. He says that a long time ago, he committed the murder under the similar circumstances. He has âa dearly fear that the old seer had eyesâ (Sophocles). It is important for him to find out further details of the death of Laius. Oedipus is tracing forward, knowing what a terrible result they may reveal. This is the example of his fearlessness in front of the consequences and his responsibility. The messenger appears from Corinth to bring the news about the death of Polybus, the adoptive father of Oedipus. The residents of Corinth elected him to become their king. Oedipus reacts on this news both with sadness and hope: it means that the prediction that he would murder his father did not come true. In his speeches to Choragos and Creon, he reveals his readiness to bear responsibility. He expels himself. He blames himself in the unintended âcrimesâ. He cannot forgive the shame that he put on his daughters by having them from his own mother. They are his daughters and sisters at the same time. Finally, he lost his eternal fight with fate. He has to accept the truth and get the punishment.
In his first monologue, Hamlet gives the reader his characteristic feature â the desire to generalize the individual facts. It was just a private family drama. For Hamlet, however, it was enough to make a generalization: ââtis an unweeded garden that grows to seedâ (Shakespeare). In general, three facts harm his soul: the sudden death of his father, the new king, and the motherâs betrayal of the memory about love. The ghost learns that his fatherâs death is the work of Claudius. âMurder most foul, as in the best it is; but this most foul, strange and unnaturalâ (Shakespeare). The people are bitter enemies; hence, rot eats away at every foundation of the human life: âSomething is rotten in the state of Denmarkâ (Shakespeare). Thus, Hamlet learns that evil is not a philosophical abstraction, but a terrible reality next to him, among the closest people. This is the external conflict of the tragedy which involves the Prince and the low-lying among Danish court, and Claudius. The internal conflict contains the mental struggle of the hero: Hamlet makes the problem of personal revenge just a matter of restoring the destroyed order of the moral world. Hamletâs obsession to commit revenge does not harm some of his principle noble honor, for example, he does not kill Claudius when he is praying in one of the galleries of the palace, because the prayer cleans the soul of Claudius and he is kneeling with his back to Hamlet. Hamlet admits that the death sleep may be a new form of human existence. He has a new view on death: it is waiting for sleep without waking up to him with the end of the earthly existence of human life. In his soliloquy, he says about the bad side of life and claims that âfrom this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!â (Shakespeare). In the end, the reader meets a new Hamlet, who does not know the former disorder; his domestic tranquility is combined with a sober understanding of the disorder between life and ideals. Hamlet finally regains the mental harmony. He understands Laertes, who revealed him the truth. He begs Horatio to live and to retells the Hamletâs story to the next generations. Painfully, he meets his death. His last words âThe rest is silenceâ (Shakespeare) are the confirmation that after the endless search of philosophic ideals in the real life, he gives up to the destiny.
Both Hamlet and Oedipus are impulsive. They seek out for the truth and revenge. However, the revenge for fatherâs death has an ironic meaning in Oedipus Rex. So, the regicide is the second thing that makes the heroesâ purposes similar. The next are their self-destructions. On the other hand, Hamlet is a more complicated hero than the Greek king. He is also a thinker. It takes the whole play until he begins to act while the king Oedipus, who is the real man of action, decides quickly and acts immediately with the post-understanding of what happened. However, the most important is the thing that makes Oedipus and Hamlet similar. It is the process of evolution that takes place during the events of the play. The Greek king, who was trying to escape the predicted destiny, accepts his fate and punishes himself. The Dutch Prince was a young man with many ideals and comforts in life. Till the end of the play, he becomes an adult man with the mature attitude to life and death.
Source: https://primeessays.com/
