Self-Infliction vs. Fate

            Although both Shakespeare’s and Sophocles’ works are incredibly tragic, the true foundation of the tragic events in each can sway one to find more tragedy in one over the other. For me, the cause of tragedy in each makes me believe that Oedipus is the more tragic play.

            With the exception of Cordelia, every person in King Lear was the reason for their own death. King Lear dies after losing his daughter, whom he estranged and banished shortly before. Regan and Goneril both died due to their conflict over Edmund. Gloucester dies due to his misguided trust for Edmund. Edmund dies at his brother’s hand, who Edmund was trying to harm throughout the play. Cornwall and Oswald die due to their misplaced loyalty. These characters are all responsible for their own deaths.

            Cordelia, however, is the truly tragic character. Her death may be the only death that is not deserved. Shakespeare focuses on her death longer than the deaths of the other characters, making it seem even more tragic. The reader gets to see the true heartbreak Lear goes through as well. “Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones: / Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so / That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever!” (5.3.256-258). However, King Lear also banished his daughter in the first act because of his own pride. For this reason, it is hard to see the tragedy of this story.

            In Oedipus, the main cause of tragedy and death is fate, not any person’s actions. Although technically Oedipus was responsible for Laius’s murder,  Oedipus also sets out to find and exile his murderer (not knowing it was himself). “And on the murderer this curse I lay (On him and all the partners in his guilt):— Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness! And for  Myself, if with my privity He gain admittance to my hearth, I pray The curse I laid on others fall on me.” Tragedy unfolds as Jocasta is introduced as well, as Oedipus tragically realized that he is the pollutant of Thebes, and the murderer of Lauis. The tragic story continues with the revelation of the true prophecy, followed by Jocasta’s suicide and Oedipus’s gauging out his eyes. The story ends with Oedipus losing his own children, and exiling himself to walk blindly until he dies.

            None of the characters in this play were responsible for their own dismay. It was all caused by fate, as the chorus states.  “I pray fate still finds me worthy,  demonstrating piety and reverence in all I say and do—in everything our loftiest traditions consecrate, those laws engendered in the heavenly skies, whose only father is Olympus.”

            Since tragedy was self-inflicted in King Lear and fate-controlled in Oedipus, the latter can be seen as the greater tragedy.