Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Oedipus Rex by William-Alan Landed, E.H. Plumptre, Press Players, E. A. Sophocles, William-Alan Landes ISBN: 0-88734-251-5 Publisher: Players Press Pub. Date: January, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.31 (77 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Not an ordinary play.
Comment: "Oedipus Rex" is a play that needs to be discussed afterwards and is certainly not a pleasurable read. I dislike myths of all sorts, so I knew going into this play that I would find it discouraging to read. The language is at times difficult, especially since the delivery and reading of the lines would be different today. The play is already short, but certain scenes are prolonged much too much. I do not recommend.
Rating: 4
Summary: Oedipus Rex
Comment: Overall, Oedipus Rex was a good book. The plot was interesting and kept me guessing. However, some parts were difficult to understand and that made it hard to keep reading. Sometimes one of the characters would just keep rambling on, and I lost interest. But, all the irony keep the book good. In class we learned about two different types of irony; situational irony and dramatic irony. This book has good examples of both. The fact that Teiresias is blind but can see the future is ironic. The best example would be Oedipus saying that whoever killed King Laius would be killed; when actually it was Oedipus who killed King Laius.
Everyone tried to run from their fate. They tried to, and thought they accomplished changing their destiny. Appollo, the god of Truth, foretold what would happen, and both King Laius and Oedipus tried to alter this. King Laius was told he would die by the hand of his son, so he left his son to die. Oedipus was told he would kill his father, so he left who he thought was his father. But their fate remained the same. Oedipus Rex is a book worth reading even thought parts of it are a little boring.
Rating: 5
Summary: The tragedies of Oedipus the King and his daughter Antigone
Comment: This volume includes two of the Theban plays of Sophocles, "Oedipus the King" and "Antgone." I was rather surprised that "Oedipus at Colonus" was not included, but certainly these two plays are the closest thematically of the three classical tragedies.
Of course, "Oedipus The King" ("Oedipus Rex") is not only the most read of all the Greek tragedies, it is also the most misread of the Greek dramas. The play's reputation exists in part because it was presented as the paragon of the dramatic form by Aristotle in his "Poetics," and it may well be because of that fact that "Oedipus The King" was one of the relatively few plays by Sophocles to be passed down from ancient times. When I have taught Greek tragedies in various classes students have reconsidered the play in terms of key concepts such as harmartia ("tragic error of judgment"), anagnorisis ("recognition"), peripeteia ("reversal"), catharsis, etc., and they usually agree this play provides the proverbial textbook examples for these Aristotlean concepts.
However, I was always bothered by the fact that Sophocles engages in some rather heavy-handed foreshadowing regarding the fact that the play's tragic hero is going to blind himself before the conclusion. The lines were closer to, dare I say, sophomoric humor than eloquently setting up the climax. But then I read something very, very interesting in Homer's "Iliad," where there appears a single reference to Oedipus, which suggests that he died in battle. Remember now that Homer's epics were written several hundred years before Sophocles was born and that the Greek playwrights were allowed to take great liberties with the various myths (consider the three different versions of the death of Clytemnestra at the hands of Orestes we have from Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus). The Athenian audience would know its Homer, but "Oedipus The King" was a new play.
This leads me to advance a very interesting possibility: the Greek audience did not know that Oedipus was going to blind himself. This was a new idea. Jocasta (Iocasta) appears in the "Odyssey" when Odysseus visits Hades, but the only mention of the sin involved is in her marriage to her son, nothing about his being blind. Obviously you will have to make your own judgment about my hypotheses, but I have to think it is at least worth consideration.
Still, there is the fact that because even those who do not know the play know the story about the man who killed his father and married his mother, "Oedipus The King" is usually misread by students. Because they know the curse they miss something very important: the curse that the oracle at Delphi tells Oedipus is not the same curse that was told to his parents (you can, to quote Casey Stengel, "look it up"). As in his play "Antigone," where the main character is not the title figure but Creon, Sophocles makes Jocasta more than a mere supporting character in this tragedy.
Following the ending of "Oedipus the King," Oedipus was exiled from Thebes, blind and a beggar. We learn from "Oedipus at Colonus" that his sons, Eteocles and Polyneices engaged in a civil war for the throne of Thebes (covered in "Seven Against Thebes" by Aeschylus). The two brothers kill each other and Creon, brother of Jocasta, becomes king. He orders that Eteocles, who nobly defended his city, shall receive an honorable burial, but that Polyneices, for leading the Argive invaders, shall be left unburied. This leads Antigone, sister to both of the slain brothers, to have to choose between obeying the rule of the state, the dictates of familial binds, and the will of the gods. This, of course, is the matter at the heart of this classic tragedy.
It is too easy to see the issues of this play, first performed in the 5th century B.C., as being reflected in a host of more contemporary concerns, where the conscience of the individual conflicts with the dictates of the state. However, it seems to me that the conflict in "Antigone" is not so clear-cut as we would suppose. After all, Creon has the right to punish a traitor and to expect loyal citizens to obey. Ismene, Antigone's sister, chooses to obey, but Antigone takes a different path. The fact that the "burial" of her brother consists of the token gesture of throwing dirt upon his face, only serves to underscore the ambiguity of the situation Sophocles is developing. Even though the playwright strips Creon of his son, Haemon and wife, Eurydice by the end of the drama, it is not a fatal verdict rendered against the king's judgment, but rather the playing out of the tragedy to its grim conclusion.
 |
Title: Oedipus Trilogy (Cliffs Notes) by Charles Higgins, Regina Higgins ISBN: 0764585819 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 12 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
 |
Title: Antigone by Sophocles ISBN: 0486278042 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 12 October, 1993 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
 |
Title: Medea by Euripides ISBN: 0486275485 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 19 April, 1993 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
 |
Title: Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller ISBN: 0140481346 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 06 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
 |
Title: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad ISBN: 0486264645 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 July, 1990 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
