Sophocles

Sophocles led an exemplary lifestyle in ancient Greece. He was a playwright, priest, and even took part in the Sicilian Expedition. As a result of these influential events and professions in his life he followed a traditional view of ancient Greek religion and society in his tragedies. As a result we as an audience get such characters as Antigone who deviates from the role and personality of ancient Greek women. In the tragedy Antigone, Polynices is left unburied and Antigone his sister believes…

has become evident that the plot will always be a sad and deplorable one. My study of the ancient Greek dramatist Sophocles has proved just that. Before Sophocles’ time, dramatists wrote tragedies three at a time. He in fact broke this practice by writing single plays that stood alone as dramatic units. As Dr. Michael Hinds stated in a lecture, “In portraying his characters, Sophocles raised irony to high art, making the characters unwitting victims of fate or their own shortcomings”, which I…

drama plays even have a tragic hero whose fate is normally far worse than they deserve. Sophocles’ Oedipus exemplifies Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero because he was a King who fell, he had a tragic flaw, and he unwittingly played a part in his own undoing. Aristotle definition of a tragic hero is a person falling from “high estate” with a tragic character flaw (Kennedy and Gioia, 2016, p. 858). Sophocles’ Oedipus was a king who fell, which is the first part of being a tragic hero.…

What is your biggest reasoning for your action: religion or laws? Antigone a play by Sophocles is taken back in ancient Greece where religion and the government were contradicting. For in the play the new king Creon declares that one of Antigone’s brothers will be buried, Eteocles, and the other to rot, Polyneices. In Greece if you were not buried you wandered the Earth for eternity. In Antigone by Sophocles, Antigone did the right thing by burying her brother Obviously, she is risking her own…

Sophocles’ Antigone tells the story of a young female living in an ancient Greek society in the city, Thebes. Throughout the play, there are two major themes, which this paper will critically look into, that appeared to be very relevant to the present time though they were not aligned to the social norms at that time. The two themes are civil disobedience and feminism, which both can be utilized in today’s society. First, the main character, Antigone portrays the act of civil disobedience, which…

Sophocles’ Oedipus the King is a play that has confounded many scholars throughout the ages. There is debate over Sophocles’ purpose in writing this play–what message was he trying to get across? Almost as is important is the controversy over Oedipus’ guilt–was he really guilty? Two particular scholars attempt to explore these questions–P.H. Vellacott and Edwin Muir. In “The Guilt of Oedipus”, Vellacott argues that Sophocles wrote the play with a deeper intention to portray a just punishment for…

Pitiful Oedipus A tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes in its audience an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in the viewing. In the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Oedipus endures many tragic events that lead to the to the downfall and suffering of his character. For a Greek tragedy to be a tragedy if must have a certain magnitude, pity and fear, and a complex plot according to Aristotle. A certain magnitude of good to bad fortune should be used in the play. In…

Three Ancient Greek plays (Oedipus Rex and Antigone by Sophocles, and Medea by Euripides) share some common similarities including prophecy, tragic flaws, and death. These three similarities occur in all the plays, and they are closely related to each other, meaning, one leading into the next. All these similarities are motifs and can be seen throughout the plays. The first similarity the plays have in common is their use of prophecies. Prophecies foreshadow events that will happen later in the…

character’s life is discussed in Oedipus the King by Sophocles. Oedipus tries to outrun a prophecy that states he is fated to kill his own father and lay with his mother. As a result of this running, he only seals that fate. Oedipus becomes a king, but he is never shown as heroic or villainous. He is only a flawed human being, desiring to pave his own path and create his own future. This trait can be found in most of humanity. From this, Sophocles seems to be arguing that there are limitations…

fates as he had thought, for every choice that he had made throughout his life, the fates had foreseen. “God. God. Is there a sorrow greater? Where shall I find harbor in this world? My voice is hurled far on a dark wind. What has God done to me?” (Sophocles 980,981). Oedipus was grief stricken after he realized the truth. Was it really Oedipus’ destiny that his life played out the way that the oracles had prophesied? Or did the fates have a hand in it? On the other hand, was it due in fact to…