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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
In three pages this paper examines how 5th century B.C. Athenian history impacts upon the tension between individual and group that Sophocles thematically develops in his Oedipus trilogy (Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone). Three sources are listed in the bibliography.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: TG15_TGoedtense.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
Civic duty was regarded as a responsibility each member was to take seriously and those who failed to contribute to the polis (city-state) in which they lived or fell short
of expectations faced heavy penalties of either imprisonment or exile. In the years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the religion of ancient Greece was polytheistic, meaning that people
worshipped many gods and goddesses. Therefore, the individual had many group obligations to fulfill - to the residents of his polis and to the gods and goddesses he served.
During the time of the Greek tragic playwright Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC), an individuals happiness was associated with daimon, which refers to "a divinity who presides over
the happiness or misery of that persons life" (Bagg and Bagg 21). Therefore, the tension between the individual and group determines whether the individual lives a happy life or
one fraught with misery. Because of this strongly held conviction among the citizens of Athens, it comes as no surprise that such tension is a theme interwoven throughout the
dramatic tapestry of Sophocles Oedipus Trilogy (Oedipus the King or Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone). The frequent references made to Oedipus as the helmsman of a ship
confronting a storm or as a metaphor describing King Oedipus himself and the plague his patricide and incest has brought to Theban subjects express the extent of the torment between
the individual and group that many Athenians may have felt during this period (Bagg and Bagg 23). In the dramatic structure of the Oedipus trilogy, the individual is emphasized, with
group actions usually portrayed collectively as observers or as spectators (Beer 45). In Greek tragedy, the chorus is designated as the group that may be community elders or some
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