Oedipus has been blinded to the truth his entire life. When he does find the truth, he loses his physical vision. Because of the truth, Oedipus blinds himself. Jocasta was blind to the true identity of Oedipus. Even when she found out the truth, she refused to accept it.
This action causes him to lose everyone that he loves. He even refuses to listen to the wise words of the blind prophet who tells him, "a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong. The only crime is pride"( Line 35). His arrogance leads him to believe that he is the only one with wisdom and his love for power causes him to choose what will keep him in power over what is right. Arrogance is a vise that people deal with on a daily basis.
It's awful"(p.16). The quote shows that he knows his guilty of lying, but he doesn't repent. Holden says, "that's the nice thing about carrousels, they always play the same song"(p.210). The quote shows that Holden doesn't like changes and doesn't want to be a change; he wants to remain the same, but he doesn't make sense because he also wants to be change himself to be "the catcher in the rye" to protect the children who are going to the cliff(p.173). Most of him in the novel, he is a liar who always says the things that don't make sense.
Character Flaws Oedipus the King and Death of a Salesman two plays depicting the inability of the main characters to accept the reality of their situation, often times using excuses or delusions to protect themselves from danger. In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus finds himself blind to the truth of his life, and his family origin. Arthur Miller’s play, The Death of a Salesman, narrates the story of a tragic character so captivated in his false belief that reality and illusion merge, resulting in an internal struggle that leads to his downfall. Each play represents the internal battle of a man struggling to come to terms with his own, bitter reality and departing from his fantasy world. In selecting the frailty of illusion over the constancy of reality, the protagonists meet their inevitable disaster.
The speaker is trapped in desire and cannot find his way out. He then goes and compares desire to a "...fool's self-chosen snare..." illustrating that desire is an act of foolishness, in continuation he accuses desire to be a "...web of will..." which is a difficulty brought by men upon themselves. He continues to use repetition on specific sets of words to emphasize his negative impact with desire. Another example is " With price of mangled mind...", an idea of him trying to accomplish the task of defeating desire yet he does not achieve anything but still loses the sanity he had left. The speaker demonstrates desire to be a trap that you won't ever be able to escape.
While that may have been the final contribution to his death, his tragic flaw is what is shown throughout the play. This flaw can be plainly stated as Romeo being far too impulsive. He seems to be driven by the idea of fate, and does not thoroughly think about his decisions. His character in the play thinks of life and love as such a quick thing, as if he is thinking to himself that if he doesn’t go with his instincts, his life will not be decent or respectable. When truthfully, these instincts are the origin of his dire choices, resulting in the end of his life.
Flashbacks.WL tortures himself with shame over own inadequacies leading to suicide. | Downfall: blinded, exiledOed constantly tries to uncover his past. Asks others.Oed tries to live up to honourable position but past unravels causing downfall. | when virtue does not triumph(efforts to do good do not bear fruit) | Bad judgement callsWL: pins false sense of hope on Biff ("A million! ")WL: pride (relives own and Biff's past glory)WL: avoids the truth/reality, vents frustration with own failure on other charactersWL: ego - makes bad choices (Charley offers job, he chooses not to accept) | Bad judgement callsOed: seeks false sense of hope from Jocata (constantly seeks solace/reassurance)Oed: pride (hubris), forces the ugly truth to be revealed.Oed: actively seeks the truth/reality, wrongly judges other charactersOed: ego - belittles Tiresias, boasts about beating fate | still felt that man is nobler than(tragic hero) | Actions to improve selfWL: effort to rectify failure (vicariously through Biff), achieve success (struggle to provide affluence for family: seeds)WL: suicide (in his mind, it is a noble act - provide a "diamond" for Biff), in reality it was needlessWL: redeeming qualities(good with hands
He explains that adults are inevitably phonies, and, what’s worse, they can’t see their own phoniness. Phoniness, for Holden, stands as an emblem of everything that’s wrong in the world around him and provides an excuse for him to withdraw into his cynical isolation, a defense mechanism to help him deal with his loneliness. Holden expends much of his energy searching for phoniness in others, yet at the same time, while he is a self-admitted compulsive liar, he never acknowledges his own phoniness. This is not only ironic, but hypocritical, since phoniness is what Holden claims to detest more than anything else in the world. Holden is further hypocritical because while decrying the abhorrent nature of adulthood, he spends much of his energy trying to behave like an adult, as evidenced by his actions such as hiring a prostitute, spending money
Hamlet- Soliloquy Assignment Hamlet has many emotional soliloquies in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which include him reflecting on his many life troubles, contemplating suicide, and making plans for revenge. Hamlet’s Act II Scene II soliloquy, which is a lengthy one, is broken down into four main thoughts; the first being how upset Hamlet is over the Player’s ability to get into the role of seeking fictional revenge with no emotional investment in a play, whereas he is a “John-a-dreams” who has made no real plans for revenge. This leads to the second main idea: Hamlet is chastising himself for procrastinating avenging his father’s death. At this point his is mopey and whiney about his lack of drive to accomplish his task. Hamlet increasingly gets angrier and angrier with himself as he keeps talking, and his anger turns to Claudius.
According to Brown, “The dramatist depicts incidents which arouse pity and fear for the protagonist [Antigone], then during the course of the action, he resolves the major conflicts, bringing the plot to a logic and foreseeable conclusion (Brown, para 5). The tragic hero in Antigone is Creon. Tragic heroes are not all good and not all bad. Creon suffers a great deal due to his tragic flaw and destructive pride. Creon believes the gods make him suffer the loss of his wife and son as punishment for his pride.