Today in AP lit, we finished the story "Oedipus Rex". I have to admit if was a very interesting tale. It's one of those stories that is just really unfortunate, you know, a tragedy. It's an old Greek tale, so it's obviously very far fetched and over the top. Oedipus tries really hard to avoid a prophecy, and still falls into it.
It was said that Oedipus was kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus then leaves his home to avoid this. Little does he know, the people that have been raising him aren't really his parents. He ends up meeting his father on a road and killing him due to an insult. He goes on to the town of Thebes and marries his mother because she was in the royal family. The tragedy gets even worse when Jocasta (Oedipus' mother/wife) figures this out and takes her own life. Oedipus then blinds himself and wants to be exiled. Oedipus deliberately tried to get out of the way of the prophecy, but by doing that he somehow walked right into it.
The story seemed kind of far fetched and weird, but it does possess some good qualities. I suppose the abnormality is chiefly due to it being Greek, but it's still silly to me. How does Oedipus try to avoid the prophecy by killing his dad, but then be completely okay with just killing another guy he sees. If it were me I would be more careful about that. I would try to avoid killing anyone. Not just because it's immoral, but because I like to take extra precautions. I suppose that's what happens when you don't take care of your children. The lesson I learned is take responsibility early on so you don't have to worry about it later.
The main tragedy is that his intentions were good, and it still ended up like this. If he had just done this, it may have just been a horror story. Since he went out of his way to avoid it and was still ruined by it makes it really sad. The metaphor behind it all is that man is limited and trying to exceed those limits leads to consequences.