The Only Crime Is Pride

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“Pride Is The Only Crime” Everyone has been rejected, and rejection hurts. For proud people, rejection hurts more. Imagine a boy and a girl. The boy wants to ask the girl out and does but the girl is not interested in dating anybody at the moment. If the boy is proud, outrageously proud, then he believes the reason behind the rejection is a failing of his, or a weakness in his character. No matter how much the girl explains, the proud boy will persist, the proud boy will continue to find ways to fix the problem. This kind of excessive pride blinds the boy to the reality of what the girl is telling him. In Ancient Greece, this pride was called hubris. Hubris destroys people, it can blind people to the reality of their situation and leads them to their downfalls as shown by the characters in Sophocles’ plays Antigone and Oedipus Rex. By looking at Oedipus and Creon, the careful reader can see how the excessive pride of each character leads them to their doom. In the play Oedipus Rex an example of Oedipus’ excessive pride is when he is asked to move aside by the former King of Thebes, Laios and Oedipus refuses. Oedipus’ pride overwhelms him and drives him into a murderous rage, as Sophocles illustrates, “the groom leading the horses forced me off the road at his lords’ command; but as the chariot lurched over towards me I struck him in my rage …He was paid, back and more!” (Oedipus Rex 43). In his rage, Oedipus kills the old man and his fellow travelers. Later on in the play, Oedipus’ excessive pride blinds him to advice and makes him deaf to the help of those closest to him especially Creon, when Oedipus says, “do you think I do not know the you plotted to kill me, plotted to steal my throne? Tell me in God’s name: am I a coward, a fool, that you dream you could accomplish this?” (Oedipus Rex 28). This quote shows how Oedipus’ pride makes him deaf to

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