Intro to Literature Luke Rolfes

Oedipus the king and Hamlet are two different play with many similarities and differences. Both play demonstrates various approaches to the search. This shows to audience about the active and energetic personality of the one and the philosophic, pensive and doubting personality of the other that leads both to the achievement of their aims. However, it happened to be a tragic end to both and after revealing the truth and accomplishing their task Oedipus and Hamlet are crushed by the severity of their doom. Talking about the similarities, both Oedipus and Hamlet were eager to take avenge in any circumstances as they had same tragedy of their dead fathers. This lead to suffer other people with a tragic consequences in both play.

Another similarity is both of the characters had issue with their families. The relationship of Oedipus with his family was strange where he ended up killing his father and marrying his own mother without knowing. Likewise, Hamlet’s relationship with his mother and uncle was complicated and mostly because of his father’s death. So, both of them were deceived by their parents. Moreover, another similarity could be anagnorisis, it is because of the way how Hamlet and Oedipus decided to discover the truths by themselves. Furthermore, talking about differences, story of Oedipus could be more about fate than Hamlet. It is because Oedipus did not know about the fact that he had his biological father and got married to his biological mother. Every decision that he made led him to this last, without not knowing what is going on. On the other hand, for Hamlet, he is aware of what is going on, and he should've known what is going to happen if he chose the decision.

Likewise, Hamlet's fate could've been becoming a king and leading his citizens in Denmark, which is a responsible thing to do in reality. However, he instead chose to revenge to Claudius for his dead father. In the end, he died with the success of killing Claudius. Claudius's fate could've been becoming a true leader by taking care of his people and listen to the citizens, becoming selfless in reality. However, he instead chose to become selfish by protecting only himself when situations came. He ended up finding the horrible truth and stabbed his eye by trying to avoid it. Similarly, another difference could be hubris. This is because Hamlet always mentions that he will kill Claudius but he is unable to put in action because he is a coward.

On the other hand, Oedipus has an excessive pride that he is very confident that he will find the solution to bring the peace to his nation. Likewise, Oedipus puts his works and decisions in action whereas hamlet seems to be philosophic as he like to put his works in words and writings. To wrap up, Hamlet makes a much more complicated character than that of Oedipus the King. It also looks that hamlet is more tragic than Oedipus the King. It is because almost everyone dies causing a terrible consequences. . Lastly, I think “Hamlet” the serves better as a model for modern-day tragedy. This is because it illustrates the deep pain from the death of the father and deceived by the family that Hamlet had. Moreover, it hurts more to him when hamlet’s mother gets married to his own uncle.

Similarly, the death of love of his life whom he loves the most in the world brings a deep tragedy in the story. So, basically in hamlet, nothing goes right and brings pain and tragedy in his life. So, in this point of view, hamlet serves better model for modern-day tragedy.

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