Oedipus Essay

               Oedipus Rex is a challenging read. The language is dense and antiquated, and it can be very difficult to understand without historical context. Many students find themselves struggling to glean meaning from the play, and without a highly competent teacher they quickly become disinterested. However, it provides a wonderful window into the culture and values of ancient Greece. By unravelling the text in a discussion the many layers of social context that made the story so powerful to its original audience become apparent.

               When I translated a section of the play into modern English, I was forced to think about what was being said on a deeper level. While what me and my group produced was far from serious, I would like to think that we managed to reinterpret the text well.  I liked listening to other groups perform their interpretations and hearing the creative things they came up with. Hearing the meaning of the lines translated into language I am more familiar and comfortable with made Oedipus easier to understand. However, many of the deeper meanings in the original text require in-depth study to truly understand, so it is very possible that there is a lot to be missed in reading it this way. The rewriting functions well as an introduction to the story of Oedipus, but more serious analysis may be more useful.

               The opera we watched was a visual feast. The images of the stricken citizens of Thebes were quite disturbing, and drove home the tension of the play in a way that guided reading could not. The makeup and effects gave the show a surreal and disturbing atmosphere. Only when seeing it performed in such a spectacular manner did it become apparent how twisted the story of Oedipus is. It was somewhat disappointing that we only saw a shortened version, as the rapid jumps through the story made it seem disjointed.

Three Dystopias: Compare and Contrast

           1984 is the classic dystopia. The archetypal example that most often comes to mind in a discussion of the concept. The people of Oceania live under the iron-fisted rule of a totalitarian state. Strict patterns of behavior are kept in place by force, and those who deviate from the norm are punished violently. Party members live bleak, short lives, kept in perpetual fear by the constantly watching eyes of the state. They are surveyed constantly; every house has a two-way screen installed. However, there is an underclass of working ‘Proles’, implied to outnumber the party, who are kept in line by their own ignorance. Proles are allowed to drink, fornicate, and celebrate as they please. They listen to music and read books manufactured by The Party’s propaganda machines. The narrator repeatedly states that the Proles are Oceania’s only hope for reform: if they ever realize the extent of their oppression, they could revolt and overthrow The Party.

The characters in Brave New World live lives of constant bliss. Drugs and illicit sex are not only permitted, but encouraged. Citizens are told to consume relentlessly, and live superficial lives governed by hollow emotions. Their society is divided into a series of stratified castes: from Alphas to Epsilons. Children are genetically tailored to match their predetermined caste. They are grown in artificial wombs and raised outside of anything resembling a traditional family unit. Once born, they are conditioned to accept their caste. The family no longer exists; natural birth is seen as disgusting and primitive, and the concepts of motherhood and fatherhood are completely alien.

In Paris in the 20^th Century, the dystopia is kept in place by its people. We see the world through the eyes of Michel, a young artist in a world where the arts are obsolete. Early in the story, he is laughed off the stage of his own graduation when it is revealed that he is a poet. In this Paris, science and technology are the only noble pursuits. The technology we see would have been highly advanced to Jules Verne: motorized carriages, weapons of mass destruction, massive machines that do complex math for the banks. But despite these marvels the world is devoid of joy. Michel is cast out by society and starves to death in the streets of a prosperous city.

Emotions are suppressed in each society depicted. In 1984 feelings that are not approved by the state are seen as ‘thought crime’ and are grounds to be imprisoned and tortured. The Party strives to make its people as mechanical as possible. In a similar vein, the people in Paris in the 20^th Century are also becoming mechanical, but of their own will. In a world where technology is valued above humanity, humans seek to make themselves more like technology. Brave New World employs a different tactic: emotions are controlled by keeping them superficial. Drugs and conditioning make certain that citizens live in bliss, and negativity is not tolerated.

 Family in 1984 exists in name only. Late in the book a character is reported as a thought criminal by his own daughter and sentenced to torture and execution. Sex occurs only during permitted times, for reproduction. There is a movement tasked with eliminating it altogether. The narrator and his lover reenact traditional scenes of domestic bliss as an exotic fantasy. Brave New World has eliminated the family altogether. Children are grown in vats and have no concept of their own parentage. Sex exists for pleasure only; no emotions are attached to it. In the story, a woman who gives birth naturally is cast out by society. In Paris in the 20^th Century family is relatively similar to what Verne was familiar with. Romance, however is becoming less and less common in Paris. Grand acts of emotion and affection are looked down upon.

The society in 1984 is clearly dystopian. The people are miserable, and only kept in line by the massive efforts of an authoritarian government. Contrastingly, while Brave New World depicts what the reader sees as atrocious violations of basic human rights, its people are completely content, making it a dystopia only to the eyes of an outsider. The narrator of Paris in the 20^th Century, while not overtly oppressed, is seen as a weak link by a society that places no value on his skills, and is left behind. The city functions, but it is a dystopia from his perspective.

All three books are meant to serve as a grim projection of a future the author saw as reprehensible and completely possible. George Orwell was terrified by the encroaching specter of totalitarianism is Russia and his native Europe. After World War II, he began to see the slide into totalitarian government as inevitable. Aldous Huxley was attempting to criticize the rise of consumer culture in America when he wrote Brave New World. At the time, Americans were becoming increasingly fixated on the thrills of youth, that is, ‘sex drugs and rock & roll’. Jules Verne had a complicated relationship with technology. As an early science fiction writer, it excited him to see technology advance and grow, but he worried that these new wonders might drive out the love of art and the glories of emotion. All three men wrote Novels about an extreme version of the future they feared.