DAVID LEHMAN
333
On the other hand, the situation in
Oedipus Rex
is completely
different. He can be blinded by rage, and commits two sins, par–
ricide (killing your father) and incest. The question comes up, which
is worse? The answer is parricide. The worst that can happen from
an incest relationship is that it may cause a family member to
become emotionally upset which is not against the law while par–
ricide is. Also, someone who is practicing incest can walk away from
it at any time while in parricide the victim is dead forever. I must
agree with his sons by their decision to drive him out of the country,
and I agree with Oedipus himself by poking his own eyes out.
Scientists claim incest can ruin your genes, although the
Greeks didn't know that when the play was written. However, An–
tigone (his daughter) is a good example. However, Antigone (his
daughter) is a good example. That is why I think Creon's punish–
ment was too harsh, and he changed it by ordering his men to bury
her in the vault outside Thebes. Although Antigone broke the law
she is worthy of a better death than public stoning, he figured. The
great humility that would arise from stoning is not deserving of An–
tigone or her family, who have suffered too much embarrassment as
it is.
Antigone is only one of the many suicides in this course.
J ocasta does it too, and Julien Sorel does not try to get off at the end
of
The Red and the Black
by Stendhal. Julien was realistic and for this
reason he was less naive than some of the others, including Candide,
but then he also chooses to die, which I feel is a kind of suicide and
immoral in my opinion. Although life may be difficult to bear, it is
the ultimate, and there are no superlatives for it.
So we see that Faust, Raskolnikov, Oedipus Rex, Antigone,
and Julien Sorel are all trapped in the same way. Some turn to sui–
cide, some turn to murder or worse. It is ironical that Candide is the
only exception because he goes through even worse catastrophes,
such as the woman who lost half her buttocks, and Cunegonde who
was beautiful but ugly when he married her, and Pangloss, and the
many kings and dukes who have less than their poorest subjects,
traveling around the world in Voltaire's
Candide
and winding up in
his own backyard.
