Monday, May 26, 2014

In Oedipus Rex, what are two quotes that tell what Oedipus thinks of himself?With MLA parenthetical citations, please.

Two quotes that tell what Oedipus thinks of himself are a
bit hard to find in the events of the play that precede Oedipus' dramatic fall from
grace and his re-entrance as tragically blind and
destitute.


However, here is a moment, mid-riddle
unravelling, in which Oedipus grapples with the possibility that he might be a low born
son of a servant:


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Break out what will!  I at least shall
be


willing to  see my ancestry, though
humble.


...I account myself a child of
Fortune,


beneficent Fortune, and I shall not
be


dishonoured.  She's the mother from whom I
sprang;


the months, my brothers, marked me, now as
small,


and now again as mighty.  Such is my
breeding,


and I shall never prove so false to
it,


as not to find the secret of my birth. (Sophocles,
1076-86)



Once Oedipus is
confronted with the whole horrible "secret of [his] birth," he has this to
say:



O
Polybus and Corinth and the house,


the old house that I
used to call my father's--


what fairness your were nurse
to, and what foulness


festered beneath!  Now I am found to
be


a sinner and a son of sinners. (Sophocles,
1394-8)


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