21st Century Audiences Feel Differently Than Ancient Audiences About Oedipus Rex
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21st Century Audiences Feel Differently Than
Ancient Audiences about Oedipus Rex
In the Sophocles play, “Oedipus Rex,” the story of a hubristic king is told. In ancient times, audiences saw Oedipus as a tragic figure, and left the play feeling a catharsis of fear and pity. However, in the 21st century, audiences tend not to feel the same way about Oedipus or get same feelings as the ancient audiences did. Reasons for this are differences in god systems, leaders duties, and perceptions of the play.
The first reason audiences today feel differently is because we dont have the same kind of god system as the ancient audiences did. A majority of the people in todays world practice a religion in which they pray and worship to only one god. When this play was written, the majority of the audiences prayed and worshiped to multiple gods. Today, we classify these gods as mythological characters and we do not believe in them. Because today there is one god for most people, and back then there were multiple gods for most people, we can not make the same connections.
The next reason why todays audiences feel differently than the ancient audiences is that in todays world we do not imbue our leaders with god-like qualities. In this play, Oedipus is seen as a demi-god. The people of Thebes trust and rely on him alone to fix all their problems. This is the same way ancient audiences cities were governed. In todays society, we do not rely on one person to fix all our problems, much less trust them to do so. Today, we are more skeptical of and less reliant on leaders to fix the problems we face. Because we do not give all our power to one leader, as is done in this play, we can not make the same connections to this play as ancient audiences did.
The final reason why a different connection is made with todays audiences as opposed to ancient audiences is because, to todays audiences, Oedipus story is symbolic of the worst possible human condition, causing us to feel loathing for him and his plight. To the ancient audiences, Oedipus story was a warning to them about what would happen if they tried to defy the gods. This level of fear is not felt by todays audiences.
Ancient audiences believed Oedipus Rex was a tragic character, which is not the same case in current society.