Quixote, Oedipus, Odysseus: The King-Comedic and Tragic uses of Dramatic Irony
Miguel de Cervantes epic saga of "Don Quixote" is a heroic quest tale, told in a spirit of dramatic irony. It contrasts the protagonist's perceived knightly identity with the reality of his status. By showing its protagonist's aspirations in a comedic fashion it highlights the foolish and corrupt state of all of humanity. Quite often Quixote's misperceptions are much more sympathetic than the cruelty of the tale's supposedly more sane characters. In contrast, the tragic figures of Odysseus and Oedipus the King from Greek epic poetry and mythology, respectively, go about on a quest narrative that ends in a tragic fashion because of the protagonist's hubris. Don Quixote makes himself a knight, and goes about tilting with windmills and honoring common women as beautiful and chaste ladies. This highlights his essential goodness as well as the gentle absurdity of the conventions of courtly love and chivalry. In contrast, Oedipus and Odysseus go about on quests with similar plot structures as Don Quixote's. All tales stress honor, the importance of hospitality, the role of fate and place an emphasis on the vulnerability of the protagonist's self-perceptions. However, because of these two great king's hubris, or arrogance in the
Even though he dies at the end of his saga, the example of his life highlights his essential goodness. "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles is a dramatization of an older myth about the rise and fall of the King of Thebes. " (Cervantes, p 1997) But the self-blindness and folly of Odysseus and Oedipus lead to their undoing. " Nohbdy's my meat, then, after I eat his friends. " The structured, rhetorical plea of contrasts or antithesis in Oedipus' speech, in contrast to the clumsy use of courtly love by Quixote, shows the gravity the King's disobedience has caused: "I have been married where I should not marry; I have killed whom I should not kill; now all is clear (Sophocles, p. The comedy of "Don Quixote" shows a foolish man made great by the force of his belief, while the tragedy of the Greeks shows clever men brought low by their belief in the ability to mold their destiny, which is a show of arrogance in the face of the gods' unavoidable powers. However, Odysseus' belief that he can affront the gods without being punished and Oedipus' belief that he can circumvent his fate are tragically foolish and result in the protagonist's estrangement and blinding, respectively. My name is Nohbdy: mother, father, and friends, everyone calls me Nohbdy. Only the willingness of Don Quixote to trust fate and embrace idealism redeems him, unlike the clever Greek kings. However, Homer and Sophocles stress that men must accept the will of the gods, and to dream otherwise, as does Quixote, is hubris. Don Quixote seeks fame with his companion Sancho Panza in the belief that any man can be a knight. Quixote is not a mere plaything of the national gods, forced to wander by fate like Odysseus, or marry his mother and kill his father as Oedipus does unwittingly. The independent Odysseus ironically can only return homeward by wandering far and wide, and by depending upon the help of his patron goddess Athena, who enables him to weather the wrath of the god Poseidon. Later, he discovers he has committed these crimes unwittingly. 382 line 386) While Odysseus is awaiting his gruesome end persuades the Cyclops to drink to intoxication and then blinds him cruelly boasting of his name as that of "nobody.
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