oedipus quotes on themes Flashcards
1
Q
king/tyrant
A
- ‘o my children’
- ‘i thought it wrong, my children, to hear the truth from others, messengers’
- ‘i am ready to help, i’ll do anything’
- ‘he will suffer no unbearable punishment’
- ‘never will i convict my king, never in my heart’
- ‘i must rule’ / ‘not if you rule unjustly’
- ‘it’s you, not him i pity- your words move me’ oedipus to chorus
- ‘good helmsman, steer us through the storm!’
- ‘so you won’t talk willingly- then you’ll talk with pain’
2
Q
hubris
A
- ‘may the curse i just called down on him strike me!’
- ‘let that man grad out his life in agony, step by painful step’
- tiresias warns ‘it’s better that way please believe me’
- ‘you criticise my temper… unaware of the one you live with’
- ‘i have such fury in me- now i see it all’ massively jumps to conclusions
- ‘creon is not your downfall, no, you are your own’
- leader warns of speaking words in ager ‘it isn’t what we need’ oedipus accused creon ‘by anger perhaps, not any firm conviction’
- ‘i would never have come if you hadn’t c called me here’
- ‘crude, mindless stubbornness’
- ‘i don’t know. and when i don’t, i keep quiet’ creon to oedipus
- ‘you will go too far’ creon to oedipus
- chorus ‘end the trouble here’
- ‘i think ice just called down a dreadful curse upon myself- i simply didn’t know!’
- ‘i strike him in anger’ death of laius
- even before he realises the family part ‘no one but i brought down these piling curses on myself’
- ‘if you love your own life, call of this search’
- ‘fail to solve the mystery of my birth? not for all the world’
- shepherd ‘why rake that up again’
- ‘i’m at the edge of hearing horrors, yes, but i must hear!’
3
Q
gods
A
- ‘apollo pressed it on us- he should name the killer’
- ‘to force the gods to act against their will- no man has the power’
- ‘and this time, i assume, even you will obey the god’s decrees’
4
Q
family
A
- ‘i will fight for him as if he were my father’
- ‘brother and father both to the children he embraces’
- ‘he sowed the loins his father sowed’
- rule ‘with equal power’ ‘she receives from me whatever she desires’
- ‘many a man before you, in his dreams, has shared his mother’s bed’
- ‘husband by her husband, children by her child’
- ‘my poor helpless girls’
- ‘your brother’s hands, you own father’s hands’
5
Q
prophecy/fate
A
- the plague means ‘black death luxuriates’
- ‘the truth lives inside him, him alone’
- ‘you are the curse, the corruption of the land’
- ‘your words are nothing- futile’
- ‘seer blind in his craft!’
- ‘this day will bring you birth and your destruction’
- leader’s warning in support of creon ‘those who jump to conclusions may go wrong’
- jocasta’s scorn of prophecy
- ‘no fear of justice, no reverence for the temples of the gods’
- oedipus ‘they’re nothing, worthless’
- ‘apollo told me once- it is my fate- i must make love with my own mother’
6
Q
sight
A
- ‘blind as you are, you can feel all the more what sickness haunts our city’
- ‘you’re blind to the corruption of your life’
- ‘apollo- he ordained my agonies’ ‘but the hand that struck my eyes was mine, mine alone’
- wishing to be deaf as well as blind
7
Q
oedipus’ attitude towards others
A
- ‘your years, your dignity- you should speak for others’ respects old age
- ‘not if you see things calmly, rationally, as i do’ creon to oedipus
