English Literature

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN In the play Oedipus Rex the theme of appearance and reality is so dominant that the play can be termed as the tragedy of appearance. In this play most of the characters are ignorant of reality. Being ignorant of his fate or circumstances, the character tries to get rid of the trouble, but is entangled more and more into it because of his doomed fate. 1. If we start from the birth of Oedipus we see that when an oracle tells the king Laius that this son will kill him and marry his own mother, Laius and Jocasta give their infant son to a servant to leave him on a hill side to be killed there. But the reality is that the servant gives the child to a Corinthian herdsman. He passes the little boy on to king Polybos of Corinth. Oedipus thinks himself as the real son of Polybos but in reality he is an adopted son. 2. When Oedipus overhears from a drunken man that he is not the son of Polybos, he asks the Orac...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN According to Aristotle the tragic hero must be a person of noble birth and prosperity whose misfortune results, not from depravity or vice but from some hamartia (a tragic flaw or an error of judgment from the hero). Further Aristotle is of the view that the tragic hero should be an intermediate sort of person, neither completely good nor completely bad . Aristotle gives the example of Oedipus as a great and successful tragic hero. Cause Of Oedipus� Misfortune It is very difficult to say that the misfortune of Oedipus results from some flaw in his character or some error of judgment committed by him. Oedipus is, no doubt, rash, impatient, imitable, and passionate. Further he is very proud of his intelligence and believes that he can find answer to every problem. Yet if we take his tragedy to be the basic action of incest and parricide then these flaws of Oedipus are quite irrelevant. It is Oedipus wh...