Oedipus the King Essay

Man is the marionette in the hands of destiny. It is the circumstances and fate which convey tragical incidents in his life. The Aristotelian tragedies be gener aloney base on this attitude. According to Aristotle tragedy is the representation of action. crude meaning of tragedies is the poignant culmination of the take to the woods. Here we ar going to discuss astir(predicate) the two contrasting tragedies which took place in different era. The first tragedy is the tragedy of mogul Oedipus which happened approximately 2000 years before and the second tragedy is the tragedy which belongs to the new era.It is Arthur moth millers Death of a Sales humankind. They are different from apiece other solely apart from a long gap of about 2000 years, scarce yet some resemblances are there in them. We are going to discuss on the resemblances and differentiations. Let us consider index Oedipus first According to the rule of Aristotelian plot Oedipus the nance is dual-lane into two different parts, one is simple plot and a nonher is composite plant plot. In simple plot the changes in the fortune of great power Oedipus get down a bun in the oven place without Peripety and discovery. It is a journey from ignorance to knowledge.He has to confront with the consequences of the trifling truth. At first he is not ready to accept the item but at the end the circumstances compel him to accept the reality. The protagonist, on with the other characters, totally becomes helpless in the hands of destiny. He is a king but the qualities of normal human beings are present in him. The tragedy takes place because of the ejaculate he has committed inadvertently. According to the panorama of Aristotelian tragedies the hero of the play is neither perfectly good nor merely bad. Oedipus thus is the man of middling weaknesses.He has had all the eminence but here he has shown falling into ruin from this distinction and it is unfortunately not because of any deliberate s in but because of the error committed by him in his ignorance. Like the protagonist the other characters in this play are also good but not perfect. For example Laios, father of King Oedipus who is of course a good soul but still he commits a sin of attempting the murder of his son at the infant correspond of his life because of the fear that his son would one day kill him. Laios had the feet of this peasant bound and pinned.Someone tossed it in a mountain wilderness. So there. Apollo didnt cause this boy to be his fathers killer. Laios didnt bide the terror he feared from his son. Thats what the words of prophecy defined. (Line 717, Scene 3, Oedipus the King) The theory of tragedy of Arthur Miller is based on the life of an ordinary man. Miller was rejected by many critics because his tragedy was not based upon the Aristotelian concept of tragedy where the tragic hero is always a king or a prince. On the contrary the hero is a leafy vegetable man and so according to the critic s he is unable to ascend the tragic sentiments.But it was the belief of Miller that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. On the face of it this ought to be obvious in the light of new-fangled psychiatry, which bases its analysis upon classific formulations, such as the Oedipus and Orestes complexes, for instance, which were enacted by royal beings, but which maintain to eeryone in similar emotional situations. (an essay by Arthur Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man) With the same viewpoint Arthur Miller has depicted the tragic horizontal surface of a very simple ordinary man, Willy. Willy is an ordinary person by occupation as well as by nature.Not completely Willy but rests of the characters are the exact mirror image of the ordinary man in the modern society who is constantly pursuing the materialist happiness. According to Miller it is not only the kings that can be the tragic heroes but the common man can also play the role of a tragic hero. As far as the issue of morality is concerned some(prenominal) plays are somewhat similar and somewhat reverse to each other. ethical motive plays a very key role in both of this play but still it defers from one another. Many people believe that Oedipus is an abominable person but it is not a premeditated vileity.Oedipus tragic fall, which after leads to tragedy was absolutely not his sin. He slays his biologic father and marries to his biological mother. It is actually the height of immorality but at the time of committing this sin Oedipus was totally unaware about the reality. In short he is the immoral man by his predestined actions. The concept of morality is deliberate in Millers Death of Salesman. Here the hero of this play Willy Loman flouts all the rules of morality. He is charlatan, flirt and a liar. The lack of morality finds there in the Lomans family itself.He goes on deceiving his wife by keeping outlaw(a) relationship with another woman. He goes on deceiving his son and wife by making his false image and by pretending to be an important person. They dont need me in New York. Im the New England man. Im vital in New England. (Act 1, interpreter 1, pg. 4, Death of Salesman) But it is an illusion. Pride is there in both Oedipus and Willy but pride of Oedipus is at least genuine unlike to that of Willy which is just a fake. The heroes of both of the plays have to pay a lot and both of them have suffered a lot due to the mistakes they have done either ignorantly or deliberately.Both Oedipus and Willy in the end succeed in acquire the savvy of the audience. I dont say hes a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His give ear was never in the paper. Hes not the finest character that ever lived. But hes a human being, and a unutterable thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. Hes not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an senile dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person. (Act 1, Part 8, pg. 40) Apart from being an ordinary man Willy like Oedipus deserves the sympathy of the audience.