Oedipus at Colonus & Kurtz in Heart of Darkness

The essence of the Oedipus myth revolves around personal responsibility in the Greek conception. Even though Oedipus appears to be the victim of a series of circumstances so that what happens to him should be no fault of his own, in the Greek view this is not the case. The structure of the three plays by Sophocles covering this myth--Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone--shows that Oedipus should have known what he was doing even if he did not and that his stubbornness in the face of growing evidence as to his crime leads to his downfall. These plays are known as the Theban plays because they tell the story of the royal house of Thebes. Thebes was founded by Cadmus, son of the king of Phoenicia, who was

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aving that city protected so long as Theseus lives up to his promise to Oedipus. The character of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness has wandered as well, but he has wandered in a way Oedipus does not, leaving behind civilization and all sense of moral order. As Oedipus makes clear, he has committed no deliberate sin; Kurtz cannot say the same. In Heart of Darkness, the character of Marlow, a persona for the author used in several stories and novels, makes a journey from civilization into the darkest part of Africa to bring back a man named Kurtz who has gone into the interior and shed his civilized exterior to degenerate into the primitive. The meaning of "heart of darkness" is multiple, with different levels of darkness and different levels of journeying into the darkness. The primary reference is to the human heart. For Conrad, the individual possesses within himself the possibility of the primitive, but society and civilization have created a framework of control by which the individual can escape from that state. Marlow makes a journey from civilization into the jungle, into the primitive, and he also makes a journey into his own heart and the darkness he finds there. This journey reflects the darkness that Conrad sees in eve
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3333
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)