Similarities Between Macbeth And Oedipus

There are two tragic heroes who are alike yet so much different. Those tragic heroes go by the names of Macbeth and Oedipus. These characters come from two different plays. The tragic hero Macbeth comes from Shakespeare 's play Macbeth while on the other hand Oedipus comes from a play titled Oedipus the King by Sophocles. Throughout this essay I will be comparing and contrasting some of their tragic flaws. The tragic flaws I am going to be comparing and contrasting are going to be fear, high ranking, and the flaw of having pride. First I will be comparing and contrasting the flaw of fear that both tragic heroes share. In the story of Macbeth he is influenced by his wife Lady Macbeth to go through with the murder of his friend Duncan who also …show more content…
This is so because both feel a lot of pride since both gain power as kings. In the play Macbeth, Macbeth is full of so much pride that he ends up being okay with letting his wife as well as himself go through with the betrayal and murder of his good friend Duncan who was the king at the time. He goes through with killing him because he takes pride in wanting the power of a king. He also shows that he is very prideful after he murders duncan because he still takes his place as king with no hesitation whatsoever. In the play Oedipus the King Oedipus shows that he is prideful in protecting his people from the plague that is said to happen if they do not find the murderer of the king. He takes pride in his position as the new king so he wants to go to all extremes to find out who the murderer was only to find out it is himself. He is so ashamed of what he has done and who has become in the end he does not want to go back to where he originally came from because of everything he put himself through since he left. He is afraid he will no longer be accepted. Even though both take pride in being king they also just take pride in who they are overall. Macbeth takes pride in who he has become and Oedipus takes pride in who he was as king before he finds out that he was the murderer of the original king. Therefore they are alike yet so different when it comes to their tragic flaw of …show more content…
We can conclude that both tragic heroes have the common tragic flaws of fear, high ranking, and pride. Although we can see that they have some of the same tragic flaws we can also come to conclusion and see they are completely different people and even though they have the same flaws they affect each of their stories in different ways. Through these three tragic flaws we can see the differences between the two main characters from the two plays Shakespeare 's Macbeth and Sophocles’ Oedipus the