Throughout history, literary works have shared many common themes and plots despite many hundreds of years between dates of publication. In William Shakespeare’s King Lear and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, similar plots of character development maintain their presence, echoing throughout history. To begin, there is a common theme of madness throughout the texts, symbolizing the fall from power that is necessary by classical Greek tragedy. Secondly, the women in both pieces have a significant impact on the lives of the protagonists. Lastly, the main characters of each of the works are blind to their eventual fate, primarily due to their hubris. There is a significant similarity in the development of the main protagonists in the plots of Shakespeare’s King Lear and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex due to the journey to tragedy their endure.
The idea of sound mind loses meaning for the protagonists of these literary works, as their fate and tragic fall from grace come true, and they are driven to madness. First, after the loss power at the hands of his two daughters, Goneril and Regan, Lear begins to show signs of losing his mind,
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!/You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout/Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!/You sulfurous and thought-executing fires,/….Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,/Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world,/….That make ingrateful man! (Shakespeare III. ii. 1-9).
In this quotation, we can clearly see that the trauma of being betrayed by his children is affecting Lear’s well-being and that his mental state is deteriorating rapidly. Looking from an outside perspective, we would see Lear quite literally yelling at an inanimate object and asking for the world to come to an end. This is an excellent example of Lear losing grasp on reality as his fate becomes true and his daughters assert themselves over their father. Alternatively, Oedipus has his own streak of madness, when he realizes the fate has come true and he decides to take dramatic action to punish himself, as he can no longer handle the guilt and stress of what he has done when he realizes that the prophecy has come true,
OFFICIAL A coupled punishment upon a coupled sin: husband and wife one flesh in their disaster- their happiness of long ago, true happiness, now turned to tears this day, ….
CHORUS Poor man! What Agony!
OFFICIAL His strength is gone… his wound and weakness is more than he can bear.
[OEDIPUS, blinded, enters and staggers down the palace steps]. (Sophocles, 71)
In this quotation, Oedipus has taken his vision, by blinding himself. It is due to the guilt of marrying his mother and unknowingly killing his father, alongside the controversy he has created due to the nature of the prophecy, he could no longer handle himself and his feelings, so he took matters into his own hands, and decided to take his own sense of vision. The resonance of the idea of happiness in this quote can also be taken as a figurative illusion to the state Oedipus once held, is the most powerful and loved man in the realm, exemplifying his fall from grace into chaos and hysteria, a world in which his only rational thought was to blind himself due to guilt. In King Lear and Oedipus Rex, the protagonists, Lear and Oedipus, have similar declines from grace and follow a similar trajectory as they make their descent into madness.
Though women were not treated as equals to men in the time that each of the plays was written, women still had the ability to influence the male characters of literary works significantly. To begin, Cordelia is the woman who has the most influence on Lear’s life. This influence is best captured in Cordelia’s attempted invasion of Britain to thwart the tyranny of Goneril and Regan, “Alack, ’tis he. Why, he was met even now/As mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud,/Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,/With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,/Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow/In our sustaining corn.—A century send forth” (Shakespeare IV.iv.1-6). In this quotation, Cordelia explains her father’s condition while she is preparing to engage the British army in order to rescue her father. At this moment, Cordelia leading an army to save her father is the single chance that Lear has to ever regain what he lost, giving her significant power over his life, and therefore, the development of his character, as he becomes dependent on others. Similarly, in Oedipus Rex, Jocasta, Oedipus’ wife-mother, has significant influence over the development of his character. Jocasta has the unique ability to rationalize with Oedipus,
OEDIPUS. He makes me murderer of Laius.
JOCASTA. His own invention or on evidence?…
JOCASTA. I have my proof. Yes, short and certain proof. Once long ago there came to Laius from let’s not suppose Apollo personally but from his ministers-an oracle, Which said that fate would make him meet his end through a son, a son of his and mine. (Sophocles 39-40)
In this quotation, Jocasta attempt to calm Oedipus from his frustration and fear that he may have fulfilled the prophecy of marrying his mother and killing his father, something neither of them wish to be true. This influence and important relationship to note is directly related to Oedipus’ development as a character in the text, due to the fact that it establishes that he can confide in people, and those people are seen as infallible in his view, as he hopes to grasp at any truth but the horrible prophecy. This interaction between Jocasta and her husband-son is integral to Oedipus’ ability to deny the prophecy, as Jocasta interjects a false prophecy that states the fate between her former husband would end with their son of the two. This denial by Jocasta gives Oedipus, and herself by extension, the last glimmer of hope to continue searching for the truth and avoid the initial prophecy from coming true. The female characters in both texts are able to influence the development of the male protagonists significantly through their trusting relationships with the men in times of dire importance for the plot of the text and the near-climax of character development.
Lear and Oedipus are blind to their own eventuality, and their actions at the beginning of the plays are a primary cause for their ill-fated demise. In King Lear, Lear is unable to see the fatal flaw he is setting for himself, as Cordelia remains the only daughter who speaks truth, and he banishes her based on the sole fact that she will not lie about the depth of her love for her father,
CORDELIA. Nothing, my lord.
LEAR. Nothing?
CORDELIA. Nothing.
LEAR. Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.
CORDELIA. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave/My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty/According to my bond, no more nor less….
LEAR. Let it be so! Thy truth then be thy dower!/… Here I disclaim all my paternal care,/Propinquity and property of blood,/And as a stranger to my heart and me/Hold thee from this forever. (Shakespeare I. i. 89-118).
In this quotation, King Lear is setting himself up to the will of Regan and Goneril by expelling Cordelia from the realm, and setting up the plot of the text. Lear is blind to his own arrogance and hubris, and due to the fact that he cannot see his error in judgement is significant for his character development. We learn at the beginning of the play that Lear is a hubris and insecure character that requires the love of others, in this case, his daughters, to show their undying love for him in order for him to feel compensated. Alternatively, Oedipus has been blinded purposely by his parents, as they attempt to avoid the prophecy told to them by the oracle of Delphi,
…Oedipus, then a young man, was told by the Oracle of Delphi that he was destined to murder his father and marry his mother. Shocked, he determines never to go back to Corinth, where he was brought up by the King and Queen…. The citizens, in gratitude, make Oedipus their King and he marries Jocasta, their widowed queen. No one knows that Jocasta is Oedipus’ real mother and that the old man he killed on the road was Laius, his father. Nor do they know that these parents of his had tried to murder hum as a baby. (Sophocles, Time and Setting)
In the background of the text, we can gather some very important information from that sets up the plot of the play. Oedipus has been deceived by his parents, Laius and Jocasta, causing him to become blind to the true nature of his condition, falling into the trap simply as a coincidence and poor fortune. This background provides pivotal and significant development to Oedipus’s character, as it shows that his blindness to his condition is due to the people around him. Blindness of their fate and the reasons behind that blindness is key in both of the literary texts, and contribute or are caused by development of the characters.
In William Shakespeare’s King Lear and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the protagonists are developed in a very similar way, despite their different themes and general plots. To begin, the echoes of madness and the protagonists losing their mind as their fate becomes true is common in both texts, and is important to the development of these characters. Secondly, female characters have significant influence over their male counterparts and leaving adding further to the development of the protagonists. Finally, both protagonists, either by the influence of others or their own hubris, are blind to their own fate. The character development of the main protagonists in Shakespeare’s King Lear and Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex are very similar due to the path to tragedy they endure.