Oedipus Rex Name:
1. What are the elements of a tragedy? (use pp. 1303-1307)
2. Provide clear details and specific examples to show how Oedipus Rex is a true tragedy.
3. Identify the characteristics of a tragic hero (use pp.1303-1307).
4. Is Oedipus a tragic hero? Why? Which of the above qualities does he exhibit? What support do you have from the text? (Provide the quotations and the page numbers)
5. Define the following terms and tell how they apply to the play:
Hamartia
Catharsis
Hubris
Parodos
Strophe
Antistrophe
Exodos
6. Explain the following lines:
a. Iacosta: Why should anyone in this world be afraid,
Since Fate rules us and nothing can be foreseen?
A man should live only for the present day.
Have no more fear of sleeping with your mother;
How many men, in dreams, have lain with their mothers!
No reasonable man is troubled by such things.
b. Oedipus: However base my birth, I must know about it.
The Queen, like a woman, is perhaps ashamed
To think of my low origin. But I
Am a child of luck; I can not be dishonored.
c. Kreon: Think no longer
That you are in command here, but rather think
How, when you were, you served your own destruction.
d.. Choragos: Let every man in mankind’s frailty
Consider his last day; and let none
Presume on his good fortune until he find
Life, at his death, a memory without pain.
7. Why does Oedipus blind himself? Is this an act of weakness or of strength? Why does he ask Kreon to drive him from Thebes? Does he feel that his fate has been just or unjust? Is his suffering, in fact, deserved? Partially deserved? Undeserved?
8. What does the final speech of the Choragos tell us about human life?