Oedipus - Introductory Questions and Resources

Two key questions to ask yourself about the drama, Oedipus:

• How is Oedipus like Everyman?  [In this instance, "Everyman" is capitalized because it refers to humanity or people in general; it is a term from early Medieval dramas that referred to "an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily."
• What does the drama have in common with the short story "That Room," which we read earlier this semester?

Introduction - Your book provides an introduction to Sophocles and  Oedipus. So does the following video:

This video gives you a "Crash Course" to Oedipus by John Green (author of The Fault in Our Stars). Answer the following questions based, in part, on the video. Don't be afraid to re-watch the video on your own time for the answers:

1. Why were plays important to the Greeks?
2. What did the Chorus represent in Greek dramas?
3. Aristotle noted that the main character of a tragedy should experience a ________________ & a _______________.
4. Aristotle defined tragedy as " . . . ".
5. Explain the difference in "tragedy" as one might hear it used in daily life and "Tragedy" as Greek (and Shakespearean) dramas. [Use your book or common sense for this one]
6.  Aristotle believed that Tragedy was meant to evoke a catharsis, a release of emotion, specifically ______ and ______.
7. In the world of Greek (and Shakespearean) Tragedy, the main character must be a man of basically ________________ who makes _________, sometimes called the hamartia.
8. Explain DRAMATIC IRONY.  Why is it necessary for the audience to know the story of Oedipus before watching the play?
9. Agree or disagree with the following quote: "What causes his [Oedipus'] ruin is his strength and courage, his loyalty to Thebes and his loyalty to the truth."
10. Explain what John Green means when he says that Oedipus asks the question, how much control do we have over our own lives.

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 Videos of the play can be found on youtube. Here is the one I suggest--in part because the drama is seen in 12 different clips, of roughly 10 min. each. This enables the viewer to watch as much or as little as you have time for and to return to the play at your leisure. This DOES NOT relieve you from READING the play, but it my help you better understand what you read:

 

Look on Youtube for the remainder of the play under: Oedipus the King by sphinx riddles -- Parts 1 - 12.  It may take some looking, but it's there. 

Essay on Poetry - Due either Wed. or Thurs. the week of 11/17/14

 Read the directions below carefully and model your own work on the work presented in Chapter 20 of your text.

 In your textbook, read chapter 20: Writing About Poetry, pages 580-587 CAREFULLY.  Read the poem on pages 582-583, titled "Manners," by Elizabeth Bishop. Then read "An Annotated Version of 'Manners'" that begins at the bottom of page 583-585.  An annotated version of "Manners" is presented for you; examine it carefully. Note the sample student assignment on page 585 and the student essay on pages 586-587.

 YOUR ASSIGNMENT / ESSAY: Select one of the four poems below.  Copy, double space the poem, and print the poem on your own paper. In your own hand-writing, annotate the poem--underline, highlight, write on the poem. Do whatever you need to demonstrate your notes on the poem.  This is part of the grade for this assignment.  Then, in a two-page essay in MLA format, discuss the ways in which at least five of the following elements work to develop and reinforce the poem's themes: 

• diction and tone
• images
• figures of speech--metaphor, simile, personification
• symbols
• irony
• sound and rhyme
• rhythm
• speaker
• setting and situation

Acquainted with the Night    by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Let Evening Come   by Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving   

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing   

as a woman takes up her needles   

and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned   

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.   

Let the wind die down. Let the shed   

go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop   

in the oats, to air in the lung   

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t   

be afraid. God does not leave us   

comfortless, so let evening come. 

The Gift   by Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm

my father recited a story in a low voice.

I watched his lovely face and not the blade.

Before the story ended, he’d removed

the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,

but hear his voice still, a well

of dark water, a prayer.

And I recall his hands,

two measures of tenderness

he laid against my face,

the flames of discipline

he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon

you would have thought you saw a man

planting something in a boy’s palm,

a silver tear, a tiny flame.

Had you followed that boy

you would have arrived here,

where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down

so carefully she feels no pain.

Watch as I lift the splinter out.

I was seven when my father

took my hand like this,

and I did not hold that shard

between my fingers and think,

Metal that will bury me,

christen it Little Assassin,

Ore Going Deep for My Heart.

And I did not lift up my wound and cry,

Death visited here!

I did what a child does

when he’s given something to keep.

I kissed my father.

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Ozymandias, et. al. VISUALS

Ozymandias

 

 

 

Richard Cory

 

 

Aristotle

 

 

Out, out--

 

 

The Raven

 

 

Poet With Face in His Hands

 

 

When I heard the learn'd astronomer

 

 



A Different Way to see a Poem

 Don't let the lines of poetry throw you off. Put the poem in prose, as I have done with "Out, out--" by Robert Frost. The alliteration, the sound of the words is still present; the meaning is still present, but it could be easier to understand.  Look for alliteration and  assonance in the first few lines of the poem, as well as onomatopoeia.

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard and made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count five mountain ranges one behind the other under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, as it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said to please the boy by giving him the half hour that a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside him in her apron to tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw, as if to prove saws knew what supper meant, leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—he must have given the hand. However it was, neither refused the meeting. But the hand! 

The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh, as he swung toward them holding up the hand half in appeal, but half as if to keep the life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—since he was old enough to know, big boy doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—he saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off—the doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!”

So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it. 

No more to build on there. And they, since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.