The Truth Shall Set You Free
In such a day and age where exists ideas like “alternative facts” and “fake news”, the search for the truth can be troublesome. The media is often skewed in delivering accurate accounts of events because its motives are influenced by ratings. Even messages in everyday conversation can change as it is passed from one person to the next. Therefore, the responsibility of knowledge and truth lies within those that seek it. In Sophocles’ play, Oedipus the King: Prologue, translated by Thomas Gould, Sophocles uses the literary devices of foreshadowing, figurative language and irony to create a drama about how the search for the truth can be painful yet liberating.
The conflict in the play is based around an Oracle’s prophecy that Oedipus, the king of the cursed city of Thebes, would be responsible for murdering his father and marrying his mother. The prophecy in itself lays the …show more content…
One of the metaphors is displayed during a conversation between Oedipus and Tiresias when Oedipus states, “You are the child of endless night; it’s not for me or anyone who sees to hurt you” (Gould lines 379-380 page 1517). The statement was an insult to Teiresias inability to visually see but the metaphor is the reference of endless night and that light is in fact the truth. At the end of the play, Sophocles uses Jocasta’s bed symbolically as the place where her cursed story began and ended. For example, the Second Messenger reveals to Choragos, “She mourned the bed where she, alas, bred double --- husband by husband, children by her child” (Gould lines 1257-1258 page 1540). Sophocles also uses symbolism in the scene in which Oedipus takes out his own eyes as punishment for of his prophesied evils. This action is symbolic of both Oedipus’ failure to see the truth beforehand and how he wished not to see the results of the truth in the
In such a day and age where exists ideas like “alternative facts” and “fake news”, the search for the truth can be troublesome. The media is often skewed in delivering accurate accounts of events because its motives are influenced by ratings. Even messages in everyday conversation can change as it is passed from one person to the next. Therefore, the responsibility of knowledge and truth lies within those that seek it. In Sophocles’ play, Oedipus the King: Prologue, translated by Thomas Gould, Sophocles uses the literary devices of foreshadowing, figurative language and irony to create a drama about how the search for the truth can be painful yet liberating.
The conflict in the play is based around an Oracle’s prophecy that Oedipus, the king of the cursed city of Thebes, would be responsible for murdering his father and marrying his mother. The prophecy in itself lays the …show more content…
One of the metaphors is displayed during a conversation between Oedipus and Tiresias when Oedipus states, “You are the child of endless night; it’s not for me or anyone who sees to hurt you” (Gould lines 379-380 page 1517). The statement was an insult to Teiresias inability to visually see but the metaphor is the reference of endless night and that light is in fact the truth. At the end of the play, Sophocles uses Jocasta’s bed symbolically as the place where her cursed story began and ended. For example, the Second Messenger reveals to Choragos, “She mourned the bed where she, alas, bred double --- husband by husband, children by her child” (Gould lines 1257-1258 page 1540). Sophocles also uses symbolism in the scene in which Oedipus takes out his own eyes as punishment for of his prophesied evils. This action is symbolic of both Oedipus’ failure to see the truth beforehand and how he wished not to see the results of the truth in the