Oedipus & Antigone test/essay

Luke Desmarais

Mr. BG Accel 12

Oedipus Questions

12/8/11

1     To people that believe in fate, fate is inevitable. It can not be changed and can not be altered. Any attempt made to try and change fate is always in vein.  No matter what you do, the planed outcome always goes full circle and comes true. Decisions involving free will are just steps toward a higher planed destiny.

    To people who believe in free will, decisions shape your whole existence. Everything you do has different repercussions. Your life takes new direction everyday. With free will there is no specific ending, you are free to choose what happens in your life.  

    Fate definitely has a part in all of our lives. Some events like if you were born a boy or a girl and who your parents are, are some things you had no control of. This means that no one was in complete control of their life. Some would say it can be predicted by genetics and it doest give any justice to the idea of fate but in my opinion if you cant control something then what do you call it. I believe that there are some aspects of life that are just fate.

2    You grow up learning that it is bad to lie and to always tell the truth. But when you do grow up you realize that lying is necessary in some situations. If one of your friends asked you if you thought they were overweight would you say yes or say no and make them feel good about themselves. That is a time i would rather not tell the truth.

    On the other hand some people would much rather hear the truth. One time all of my friends went to the movies without me even though they know i wanted to go. When they got back i asked them how it was. To make me feel good they lied and said it was horrible. I believed them and never went to see the movie. Eventually i saw it on HBO and i was really mad because it was a really good movie. I was wish i would have seen it in theaters. I would have preferred if my friends told me the truth so i could have gone seen it in theaters.

    Overall i believe that it all depends on how you would want to be treated. There are some times where it is better to lie but if you are kind of person that would always like to know the truth then you are not going to lie no matter what. Personally there are sometimes when i would not like to know the the truth and there are times where i don't tell the truth.

3    Sigmund Freud was a psychoanalyst from the late eighteen hundreds to the early nineteen hundreds. He came up with this idea of the Oedipus Complex. It is the idea of all young children having the desire to kill their fathers and have sex with their mothers. According to the Oedipus Complex this is a stage that everyone goes through and most people grow out of it. The people that don't grow out of it are the people that do demented things like murder or rape.

    This idea derives its origins from the play Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles. In this play a boy is born and his destiny is to kill his father and sleep with his mother. His parents, to prevent this, left him to die.A man finds Oedipus. After he grows up, the prophecy eventually comes true and when Oedipus finds out what he had done he stabs out his own eyes. I think that the Oedipus complex is insane.

    One way that the Oedipus Complex could be argued is when you are that young you are not capable of a thinking level that high. You don't even know what killing or sex is.This is one reason why i don’t believe in this idea. One augment for it is it can explain how some people can have such a sick mind. The reason people kill their families or rape young children is because they never grew out of this stage. This is the only part that has some reasoning to it.

4    In the play, Antigone is a very unique character. She doesn't conform and do what everybody else is doing. She acts on what she believes is right. She doesn't care who she makes mad or what laws she breaks. In the play, Creon, the king, issues a death warrant on anyone who ties to bury the dead Polyneicies. Polyneicies  is Antigone’s brother so she tries to do it anyway regardless of what happens. I believe she get her courage from her sense of family.

In her eyes her family is more important than the law and even more important than the consequences of her actions. The reason why anyone follows or breaks a law is if the reward of breaking that law is worth the chance of getting caught. No one would break laws if there was nothing to gain, whether it be money or pleasure. Also on one would follow the law if you couldn't get caught.

    There are everyday laws that i choose to bend break or follow based on risk and reward. One thing I do that is against the law is j walk. I do this because i know I'm not going to get in trouble for it and it saves me time. One law I choose to bend is the speed limit. More or less i follow it but sometimes i go five or ten miles over the speed limit. I do this to get places faster and i know i probably wont get in trouble. One thing i do to follow the law is I don't steal. Getting caught stealing is not worth it because i will most likely get caught and if i do there is a big punishment.