HAMLET AND KING OEDIPUS

Compare Hamlet and King Oedipus

Compare Hamlet and King Oedipus

Introduction

King Oedipus and William Shakespeare's Hamlet are two different stories with two different individuals and both the stories are quite different considering their themes and plot. The theme talks about fate solely and ways in which a person is unable to bring any change in his fate. The other theme talks about taking revenge and reveals that how a person can be changed forever. Even though, both the persons are quite different, having dissimilar lives but still they have a lot in common. They both have lived their lives in a similar manner. In some significant situations, they have responded in similar ways and made comparative decisions of their lives. The major conflict in both the stories can be defined as the worst kind of clash, which persists within families. Both the stories have different problems but the mode of action taken by both the individuals is the same.

Question 1: Compare Hamlet and King Oedipus in terms of how the breaking or corruption of trust between characters is central to both tragedies. Discuss no more than two or three examples from each text.

The comparison of King Oedipus (one of theGreek King) and Hamlet (Shakespeare's hero), in terms of their tragic life can be understand from the fact that, both are constantly trying to find the truth and it is after knowing the truth that they suffer from consequences. The story of the King Oedipus revolves around finding the murderer of Laius where as in Hamlet the specter of his father reveals the truth about his death and that it did not require much effort. In both the stories each individual has to discover whether the disclosure is true or not.

The first difference that has been identified amidst the tragedies of the two stories is the fact that why did they began to seek the truth. For this, Oedipus was forced to search when people came begging to find a cure for the plague that was afflicting the people, and then he sends his brother to the temple of Apollo, and upon arriving back he had a question for the King in which he had to find the real murderer of Laius, that is how the search begins. As he said;

"I can hold nothing back from you now that I can reach this pitch of dark foreboding."

While in Hamlet after his father's ghost appears he began to investigate whatever his father had unfolded. Here an element of revenge can be identified and it is consistent in both the stories because in both stories the search begins for the desire for revenge and the desire to honor their father. The story of King Oedipus presents the efforts and hard work invested to make his people free of plague, but in order to accomplish this, he had to find out the real murderered Laius. Since then, Oedipus begins an arduous search for it, not knowing it was the same (dramatic ...