Truth and Teiresias in Sophocles Oedipus Rex and Al-Hakims King Oedip

Truth and Teiresias in Sophocles Oedipus Rex and Al-Hakims ability Oedipus In both Oedipus Rex and King Oedipus, Teiresias is defined by his relationship to the faithfulness in Sophocles play as a courier, in Tawfiq Al-Hakims as a manufacturer. Sophocles Teiresias is a conduit, a vessel through which the truth of a future created by the gods can be revealed, while the modern Teiresias is actively engaged in creating, shaping, the truth out of a suppositional spiritual vacuum. These differing roles place both characters at a certain distance from their actions and sense of responsibility. Based, to a great extent, on this proximity, each Teiresias develops a radically dissimilar concept of the truth. Though the characters themselves are in many ways philosophical opposites, the function Teiresias serves in each play is not at all dissimilar. A sense of the truth as a source of destruction as well as possible redemption is ultimately reinforced by the front of Teiresias in each play. Oedipus accuses Teiresias in each play of withholding critical information. Both characters make similar decisions to attempt to withdraw themselves from the situation. Their motives, however, are distinctly different. rationality these motives points paradoxically toward the individual fundamental differences between characters as well as their eventual thematic similarities. Sophocles Teiresias is a reluctant prophet. He is in awe of the truth because he is powerless to change it. Teiresias does not own the truth it was never his to possess. Instead, he exists as a passive agent, an intermediary, between present and future, gods and humanity. Because the truth is brutal, cruel, and perchance sometimes excessive and unjust even... ...refers, instead to vision on a more figurative level. Sophocles speaks to this kind of dodgeness when Teiresias states, You whose vision is straight shall be blind (ln 419, p.127). Achieving this level of insight may well be an impossible ta sk. In our attempt we may always hear the laughter that plagues Al-Hakims Teiresias, mocking laughter that has dropped from enlightenment since the beginning creation (124). Understanding the relationship of Teiresias in each play to the truth (its conveyance, its creation), may help us to determine our own proximity to this aforesaid(prenominal) elusive and dangerous goal, the truth. Works Cited Al-Hakim, Tawfiq. Plays, Prefaces and Postscripts of Tawfiq Al-Hakim. Trans. W.M. Hutchins. Washington, D.C. Three Continents Press, 1981. Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Rpt. in Ten Greek Plays. Ed. L.R. Lind, Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1957.