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Playlist Oedipus: Shmoopversations 6 videos
Oedipus learns more about the prophecy and King Lauis' death, with a little help from his on-stage-Greek-chorus friends. It's becoming clear he may...
Oedipus confronts Jocasta about the prophecy and learns that it has in fact come true. What could be a more awkward family dinner conversation when...
Oedipus 4 460 Views
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Description:
A distraught and helpless Oedipus questions fate and free will when he discovers that he's killed his father and married his mother.
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak in What if it's the king
- 00:07
Ah la shmoop The baby was from dacosta Edifice is
- 00:15
acosta's son The man he killed of the crossroads was
- 00:19
most likely his original father And that he went on
- 00:23
to marry his mother What do you do with this
Full Transcript
- 00:27
information Out of his run out of the room Screaming
- 00:32
seems appropriate Yes it's really The only thing that you
- 00:35
could do And at this point there's a lot of
- 00:38
in the air I mean the play stops for a
- 00:41
moment to allow him to think about his life Has
- 00:44
he had free will Does he still have free will
- 00:48
It seems as though he doesn't Everything he's ever done
- 00:51
has led to these two key actions So adamis wanders
- 00:55
for a while thinking about these things and then returns
- 01:01
what he finds there is that shit Kostya has hanged
- 01:03
herself Well yeah Another predictable but still incredibly distressing response
- 01:12
to this kind of information So now atavus has his
- 01:16
own choice He could follow acosta He could end his
- 01:19
own life He could try to continue to service king
- 01:25
Or he could punish himself in some other way And
- 01:30
the decision he makes is quite interesting He takes the
- 01:33
broaches off of acosta's dress and these have pins behind
- 01:38
them And he uses those pins to gouge out his
- 01:42
eyes I's the chorus returns to the scene where obviously
- 01:46
shocked They want to know why he's done what he's
- 01:49
done And he explains that now that he knows the
- 01:53
truth there's nothing pleasant in the world for him to
- 01:56
see again Really really profoundly dark And now he has
- 02:01
to leave He exiles himself in a sense he becomes
- 02:05
a beggar for a while he asks his brother in
- 02:08
law creon han to take responsibilities for his two daughters
- 02:12
He's leaving behind Obviously he laments having been born into
- 02:17
such a cursed family having inflicted that curse on everyone
- 02:22
around And is that just pal historian that the story
- 02:26
ends with the greek chorus on stage again sort of
- 02:30
explaining to us in their own oblique way what has
- 02:34
happened They chant the maxim that no man should be
- 02:38
considered fortunate until he is dead So we do end
- 02:43
on this no more or less of helping this helplessness
- 02:47
and an inability to escape one's fate So what does
- 02:52
somebody reading this play or watching this play What are
- 02:55
we meant to Take away from it there's an easy
- 02:57
interpretation but this idea that you can't escape your own
- 03:02
fate i think there's more to it than that regardless
- 03:05
of what your fate is do have various options for
- 03:10
how to deal with it and what we've just been
- 03:12
presented with our a set of people who encounter a
- 03:17
set of crossroads literal and bigger it and you have
- 03:21
joe kostya and last who receive a prophecy and have
- 03:25
to decide what to do it You have a piss
- 03:29
later in his own life counter's men who want to
- 03:32
kill him and decide how to respond And you have
- 03:36
a piss later faced with what might be a sort
- 03:39
of really unfortunate and haunting truths about his life gets
- 03:44
to decide should he pursue them Should he try to
- 03:46
ignore them And you can see how making any of
- 03:51
these decisions might have a negative or unexpected resolved But
- 03:56
the fact is that people can choose what they're going
- 03:58
to dio right And i think that process that this
- 04:01
play walks us through What is edifice reasoning for blinding
- 04:07
himself Describe the maxim of the story how do themes 00:04:12.338 --> [endTime] like fate and crossroads come into play
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