King Lear & Oedipus!
By: Wendy • Essay • 1,201 Words • June 5, 2010 • 1,354 Views
King Lear & Oedipus!
King Lear & Oedipus!
King Lear and Oedipus are two different characters, in two different literatures but when comparing them, they have many similarities with their differences. King Lear and Oedipus Rex were written at different times and are both well-known literatures. They are both tragic heroes and had suffered tremendously because of their actions.
Being tragic heroes, they’re both well known as a king. They’re both liked by people but even with everyone around them trying to protect them, they’re a victim to bad decisions and therefore suffered consequences. Isocosta and Teiresias both tried to warn Oedipus of his fate and they tried to protect him but his pride got in the way and he had to suffer the consequences. King Lear was greatly protected by people that loved him, Cordelia, Kent, Albany, and many others but in the end, they couldn’t protect him because his decisions were too great to fix in time. Oedipus and King Lear were the good characters in their literatures but they had to suffer to realize their mistakes. They both cared too much about their image and what the public thought of them. King Lear and Oedipus shared a motive behind their actions and it was pride. They let they’re pride come in between their decisions. King Lear let his evil daughters’, Goneril and Regan, flattery affect his decisions and when his favorite daughter, Cordelia, was the only one being honest, his ego was hurt and therefore he rejected and disowned her. He cared more about how everyone saw him instead of honesty and took the lies Goneril and Regan told him instead thinking clearly because of his pride. King Lear suffered with pride through out the whole story. He was too proud to listen to his evil daughters because he wanted to be respected as the king, so he refused to minimize the number of knights he had; when he agreed to, it was too late because Goneril and Regan did not accept his deal anymore. He threw himself into the wild because he was just too proud to admit defeat from his daughters, he did not want to acknowledge that he made the
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became mad because of this and did not want any help from the people that loved him. Oedipus was also filled with pride and therefore proclaimed that the person who murdered Laius who be exiled from the city. He wanted the people of Thebes to respect and honor him; he wanted to be a strong and great hero. So he didn’t think of the consequences and when Teiresias and Ioscata told him to not pursue the proclamation he didn’t listen. His ego and pride was too big and he did not listen to Teiresias, he blamed everything on Creon. But as it turned out, everything decision he had made out of pride had affected him the most and he was the one that had to suffer. He carried his pride all the way to the end; he stabbed out his eyes in the end and chose to be blind because he couldn’t bear facing the public because his pride was still controlling him.
King Lear and Oedipus both learned their faults but it was not till the very end when nothing could be done to help them. Even though Kind Lear and Oedipus realized what they had done wrong, they did not fully convert their lives to fix their mistakes. King Lear did not fully recover from his insanity and therefore could not fully make amends for what he done. But he did realize that Cordelia was his true daughter and that Goneril and Regan had deceived him. Oedipus never truly realizes his mistakes because in the end he was still carrying his pride. Even though he did realize that he had to suffer his own proclaim and exiled himself. He was too proud to face the people of Thebes, the same people that he wanted respect from and therefore became filled with pride; instead he blinded himself and never truly looked into the eyes of his people to admit his wrongs. Between King Lear and Oedipus, they share many similar experiences but one big difference between them is how their lives ended. Even though King Lear