This week in my tragic life, we watched a TED Talk by Dan Ariely. This was a very interesting one, and one of my favorites that we have watched so far, I think. Ariely talked about how we may not actually be in control of our decisions as much as we think we are. He used many examples through illusions, different types of forms, and more. One of the examples that he used that I thought was interesting was the table illusion. There are two tables, one that looks longer then the other, but in reality, they are the same size. Even after showing that the tables have the same length, our brains still don 't see it as the tables having the same length. This was so interesting to me, because when I actually thought about it, I realized that he was right. Even after he put the two lines on top of each other, once they went back to their own tables, it went back to looking like one table was longer than the other. Honestly, I didn't even want to think about it anymore after that. It was too crazy to even comprehend. I feel like this can easily be applied to Oedipus. Within the play, Oedipus was never really in control of his decisions. He thought he wasn't going to be following the terrible fate, and neither did Jocasta when she found him, not even knowing it was her son. Through the power of fate, they were brought together without them even thinking about it. That's some wild stuff, man. They get so focused on trying to avoid the fate, that they don't even realize that they are already following it perfectly.
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Oedipus is honestly one of the craziest things I've ever read. For something so old, it was really insane when you think about it. A man trying to avoid his fate for his entire to life, only to figure out that he's been following it the whole time. Honestly, it's like the biggest middle finger to Oedipus ever. It truly was a tragedy. Even though he was a cruel and rude guy when he was ruling, you can't help but feel at least a little bad for him. I feel like one of this biggest themes in this play was in fact fate. The idea that you can't avoid fate, and no matter what you do it'll find you and you'll be stuck with it. He didn't even know that he was part of this fate, so really, you can't even blame him that much for it. If anything, it's Jocasta's fault. She should've just left and gone somewhere completely different in the first place. Like, no where even near where she would think that her son would go. I feel like she'd at least try a little harder instead of just marrying some random guy that was brought in. Shouldn't the fact that he KILLED her old husband give it away. Anyways, it's all just the most crazy things ever. Jocasta kills herself, Oedipus stabs his eyes out for really no reason. Just to "try to see the truth" or something. It's a little too late to see the truth, buddy. Poor guy. I feel like this shows kind of the basic elements of what a tragedy is. It has all of the things that people think of when they think of tragedy. Death, a depressing ending, etc. It's kind of like the original tragedy, if you want to think about it that way. |
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